


Anthropomorphic

by tenscupcake



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:10:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 51,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4243770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenscupcake/pseuds/tenscupcake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the moment the Doctor gains consciousness in a mostly human body, what he wants more than anything is to be with Rose. What he soon discovers, however, is that they must confront many obstacles that threaten their relationship before they can heal. But as they begin to build a new life together, their mutual struggle to adapt to domesticity and the challenges of his incipient humanness will cement their bond stronger than ever before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been brewing in my devilish little head for about a year now, and I've finally started fleshing it out! I think I'm playing with some unexplored and maybe sensitive topics here that I very rarely see touched on in Tentoo-centric fic. So, hopefully something refreshing because I know this tale has been told a thousand times. This is going to be a really cathartic journey for me, I think, and I'd be thrilled to have you take it with me. Going to be a (probably) lengthy multi-chap. Really my next big project. Thanks, of course, to Amber for helping me think through this, encouraging me, helping me pick the title, and stamping the Tentoo seal of approval! And thanks to Kristina for the beta work and helpful feedback!  
> Note: I feel morally obligated to stamp a heavy angst warning on this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT NOTICE (optional) - for people wondering where I'm going with this... I was thinking about this the other day when I was outlining some (much) later chapters. In the notes of chapter 4 I made it explicitly clear this will be a Tentoo/Rose endgame story. That Ten's time in this story is limited. That's still true of course. But I was also thinking about some reasons I am often afraid to start multi-chapter Tentoo-centered fics, with the future unknown and there being so many common elements of Tentoo/Rose fic that makes me incredibly sad/angry. So I want to make it clear that, although this is definitely an angsty fic and the pain isn't really going to let up anytime soon, there are a few elements I can PROMISE you won't find in this fic (none of these are spoilery, not really, just things that I personally cannot stand when people do that I want to assure you will not happen, but you can feel free to ignore them if you still don't want to know). So, things I will not be including in this Tentoo and Rose journey:
> 
> 1) Tentoo is not going to die. (Nor is Rose, but that's much less common in fic.)  
> 2) I'm not going to split them up, even temporarily.  
> 3) They are not going to cheat on each other at any time, or even consider it.  
> 4) I'm going to rip your heart out along the way, but the ending will be happy.
> 
> I say these things for the comfort and safety of everyone in the d/r fandom interested in this fic. Because I've really set the stage for a misery fest with these first few chapter. I don't want anyone to live in fear of the next update! Also, I won't be giving away any major plot-related spoilers (against my belief system), but if you've got any other fears about this story or want to know if I'll be doing something else awful I didn't think of, I may be able to ease your worries if you send me a private message on tumblr.

“But you can’t!”

Rose’s voice cracks as she cowers into Jack Harkness’ coat, eyes brimming with unshed tears, pleading with him not to leave her.

She’s right. He can’t. _He can’t._

It took them months to rebuild their relationship from the rubble after the first time, for Rose to finally, wholly accept him as the same man. But he’d be lying to himself to say he is exactly the same man as his predecessor. That wounded and calloused man burned in a blinding act of passion, and this one was kindled from the ashes, born out of self-sacrifice and humanity and (most of all) being arse-over-elbow for Rose Tyler. These last three years without her have rivaled the worst losses he endured during the Time War; everywhere he goes his hearts beat it out in a never-ending rhythm: I miss you, Rose.

And now she’s here, _really and truly here_ , and even stronger and more beautiful than her memory in his daydreams, and neither of them get even one morsel of their sweet reunion before it all goes pear-shaped. And this time is about to be so much worse than the first. She’s seen inside his mind, and he inside hers. They’d made love now, for the first time… and the two hundredth. Three years without her, and most of the time not spent saving the Earth or one galaxy or another was spent fantasizing about an impossible day like this. About hugging and hand-holding and snogging and shagging. Lots of shagging. And talking. No Daleks. Never any Daleks.

But he’s about to turn into another stranger to her, one it could take months for her to get acquainted with, to learn to trust again. To love again. Rose is no Gallifreyan native. He knows the whole concept of regeneration isn’t something that’s intuitive for humans; they simply aren’t wired to adapt to it as quickly as he is. It was one thing for a close mate of hers, that she may have had some romantic interest in, to change his face. But it will be another story entirely to endure the process with the level of intimacy they’ve shared now.

There must be a way stop this.

He’ll do _anything_ to stay the man Rose fell in love with.

But it’s too late: he’s regenerating.

\---

Something is definitely wrong.

After nine regenerations, the Doctor knows roughly what to expect from the phenomenon. The shortness of breath, whatever debilitation accompanies the cause of death, the searing glow of regeneration energy, the progressive loss of motor control… all culminating in the agony of blazing resurrection.

As the light and heat fade, his first thought is an acute awareness that he’d botched the regeneration enough to preserve his body, and that residual regeneration energy had somehow been routed into his severed hand (which he always had a feeling he was keeping for a reason, but could never pinpoint it). The decision had truncated the physical transformation, but he hadn’t expected to come out the other end of the tunnel of death feeling this disoriented.

For starters, he doesn’t remember falling to the grating of the console room, but he regains consciousness flat on his back, and jolts upright in a cloud of regeneration glitter as soon as he can move. He also doesn’t remember taking his clothes off, but he can feel each and every unpleasant diamond cutout in the metal floor under his bum, and his bare arms brush against his bare torso as he acclimates to a seated position. Yep, completely starkers.

And he’s _burning up._ It’s so unbearably hot in the console room that the exploding panels and scattered flames wreaking havoc on his ship barely register in his brain. But for some reason he can’t regulate his body temperature. Sweat starts to drip noticeably from his forehead and tickle as it slides down his back, but it does nothing to mitigate the outrageous heat cascading through his bloodstream and radiating from his skin. Somehow, though, it doesn’t feel like illness, like something he needs to fix. This uncomfortable heat and dampness seems to be his new set point, the healthy reaction to elevated temperature for his body, something he’ll just need time to get used to.

What the hell is _happening?_

“It’s you,” Donna says, forcing him to narrow his focus on her existence. She’s the only one on board; Rose and Jack are nowhere to be found. And the TARDIS isn’t only missing passengers, it’s rattling and smoking like she’s about to meet her destruction. Well, Donna recognizes him. That confirms he hasn’t changed his appearance, at any rate, and he’s immeasurably excited about that.

“Oh, yes,” he affirms. She glances down but he can’t find it in himself to cover up the important bits.

“You’re naked.” She averts her eyes.

“Oh, yes.”

Several things click into place as he leaps up from the ground.

The glass container that used to hold the severed hand, loaded with regeneration energy, is broken on the floor. All senses unique to Time Lords have been annoyingly dulled, to the point where he has to put a tremendous amount of focus to analyze the clues around him. But Donna is definitely giving off the same amount of spent regeneration energy that he is. She touched the hand. He sprang into existence. She got pieces of him, he got pieces of her. Instantaneous biological metacrisis.

It’s something that all his life has only been a theory – he’s never actually seen one in person before. Well, that’s all about to change.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realizes that the original him – the real him, one might think – is outside the TARDIS, somewhere on the Dalek mothership with Rose. And that she may very well see _this_ him as nothing more than a cheap copy. But somehow, the Daleks have sent the TARDIS to be destroyed, and his ship’s about to breathe her last. So for right now, all he can feel is exuberance and gratitude at _being alive_. He can save the TARDIS, and more importantly Donna, because if he hadn’t just burst to life, they’d both be toast in a few seconds.

First task as a metacrisis: dematerializing a detonating TARDIS. Should be simple enough. His mind races as he jams on the correct controls to get them out of here, trying to get a grip on and understand just how his biology has changed, and what it will mean for him.

It only takes a few words with Donna to make him realize exactly what he is – no, what they both are – human-Time Lord metacrises. Taking stock of everything that’s changed is nothing short of horrifying. One heart. No wonder running around the room and sprinting to the wardrobe and back was enough to make him out of breath. His physical build, height, weight, and appearance are unaffected, but the thin frame and wiry muscles no longer conceal the power of a man twice as thick. For the first time, he properly feels like a six-foot plus beanpole – slight. Maybe even weak.

Of course, one of the first things he noticed was that it feels like his body temperature is much closer to a human’s than a Time Lord’s. On top of that, attempts to gauge various markers of his physiological status all read out muffled and unclear: at the moment he’s completely unable to access blood glucose levels, concentrations of hormones in circulation, and core temperature. Regulating any bodily process appears, at least for now, impossible. Entirely autonomic.

He can feel the TARDIS in his mind, and understand her, so he retains some telepathic ability, but that also seems dulled. It’s substantially more difficult to communicate with her; the conversation seems largely one-sided. He can just feel Donna, when he touches her, at the edges of his mind, but the swaying branches of her thoughts are more guarded to him, as though behind a locked gate that’s never been there before. His fingertips are less sensitive to the touch, which worries him even more. It’s one very important characteristic distinctive of a touch telepath. He can sense when they’re safely in the vortex, as well as flickers and whispers of his and Donna’s timelines, but the they’re so dark and hazy he can barely make them out.

In the midst of sussing all this out though, he comes to the conclusion his intellect hasn’t been compromised. All the medicine and chemistry and physics and rhetoric he’s ever learned are still with him, and he can understand it all. Thank the stars for that.

At the end of the conversation with Donna, though, he still doesn’t have enough information to assign a percentage to his Time Lord-ness. But his body is human enough to have a single heart, hot, perspiration-prone skin, no respiratory bypass… oh.

There’s no active regeneration energy locked away in his body anymore. No more regenerations, and that means no more quasi-immortality. He’s going to age like a human. Die in a few decades, at most. Well then. He figures the human proportion is quite high.

His brain is Time Lord enough to retain his former intelligence, some degree of telepathy, and the ability to sense timelines. And yet, it’s human enough that he has virtually no control over what’s happening in his body, picked up some of Donna’s speech patterns and mannerisms, and the aforementioned senses are substantially handicapped. Muted. For now, all he really knows is ‘part’ Time Lord, part human. Erring on the side of human.

From here on out, his life’s going to be very, very different.

\---

“You’ve got to be joking,” Martha scoffs, setting her fan of UNO cards down on the table.

“I’m not though,” the Doctor insists, shaking his head with a humorless chuckle. “Some… something like ninety percent human.” He gulps back more of his champagne. “Dunno the percentage exactly but… I’m basically human. Me, a human!” He laughs again, more amused by the notion with each passing minute. “Blimey, ethanol tastes better than it used to,” he adds loudly, staring down at his drink in amazement.

“I’ll drink to that,” Jack chimes in, taking a swig of his beer.

“What’s gotten into him?” Martha whispers to Donna while Mickey takes his turn, quiet enough for any other human but not for his still partially-Time Lord ears.

“I dunno,” Donna replies. “The proper Doctor can’t get drunk, I don’t think.”

“I _AM_ THE DOCTOR,” he thunders, chucking his glass to the nearest wall, anger burning hot beneath his cheeks as it shatters and rains to the kitchen floor. Okay, maybe a little bit of Oncoming Storm in this body.

“Woah.” Jack holds arms up like he’s talking a horse down from its hind legs. “Y’okay there, Doc?”

“Stop. Acting. Like. I’m not. The Doctor. Everyone,” he grounds out, ensuring to hold a solid second of eye contact with everyone at the table.

“You got it, Boss.” Mickey surrenders his hands into the air, as well.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, Doctor,” Donna tries to assuage him. “Of course you are. I’m just… you’re acting… strange.”

“Yeah… are you all right?” Martha asks, cautiously placing a hand on his forearm. It takes everything in his overheated, lanky body not to smack it away and stalk off. “You seem a bit…”

“Tetchy,” Donna finishes.

“But, Doctor, we’re celebrating. We _beat_ the Daleks.”

“I killed them, you mean,” he snaps. Davros’ condemnation is still ringing in his ears.

“There was nothing else to be done,” insists Donna, closing both her hands around one of his, and in doing so puts his cards on display for the table but he doesn’t particularly care anymore. “I would have made the same decision. And if there weren’t two of you, the one in brown would’ve done the same. Even if he’ll never admit it.” He has to applaud her choice of words, because if she’d said ‘the proper Doctor’ or ‘the Time Lord Doctor’ or something along those lines he may have burst into flames in his chair.

“Maybe you’re right.” He sighs, rubbing his eyes with his free thumb and index finger. “I’m sorry. I just… dunno know how to handle all this. I’ve never been _human_.” The word sticks to his tongue a little with obvious disgust, and he winces a little as reality sinks in just a bit more. “I dunno _how_ to be human.”

“Well, for starters, maybe lay off the champage,” Donna teases.

“Well, that’s just it, Donna. Alcohol used to have no effect on me. ‘Less I wanted it to. I could metabolize it in a tick. Just a tick.” He breathes a deep sigh, trying to take stock of the effects it’s having on him now. “But now I’m a bit… fuzzy. And my ears feels sort of… hot. And I’m angry. But a second ago I was happy.”

“Just a little tipsy, then,” Mickey says with a laugh.

The Doctor grimaces, and it slowly turns into a pout as he considers everything this will mean.

“Oh, you dumbo.” Donna’s chair scrapes against the floor as she scoots around the table and pulls him into a hug, and he can’t help but reciprocate. It just feels… nice. Really nice. Warm and squishy. In only a few seconds he finds himself giggling rather like a little boy again. He peeks up to see Martha eyeing them both awkwardly around her glass of wine, dithering on whether she should join in on this.

“Come on!” he growls, gesturing her closer with a tilt of his head, and she sets the glass next to her cards, leaps out of her chair. It’s as awkward as it is tender, both of them hunched over to get their arms around him since he’s still glued to his chair.

“Chin up, Doctor,” Jack adds, standing so he can walk around the table and thump him on the back with a large hand. As much as Jack used to bother and worry him, he can’t bring himself to feel annoyed or threatened by him now. All that stuff about him feeling ‘wrong’ has simply gone from his psyche. Jack’s just a bold man burdened with immortality, and he knows very well what that’s like. He’s proven himself compassionate and loyal and dedicated to him, and he’s always shoved it back in his face. He feels nothing but empathy and compassion for the man now, and can’t stop himself from inviting him in.

“Oh, get in here,” he concedes, and in the same second Donna’s grabbing him by his big blue coat and pulling him closer.

Blimey, this must be the human part of him talking.

“Besides, Rose is back now,” Jack adds, inspiring the three of them to finally step away and return to their respective chairs. “You gotta be happy about that, right?” Jack’s smile is genuine; he’s one of the few people who really knows the relationship he and Rose had before, and what losing her did to him.

“Yeah,” he beams, teeth and all, acknowledging Jack’s point, but the smile fades and then turns down into a frown quickly when he remembers why she’s not in their company. “But she’s still with me. The _other_ me. They’ve been talking for an hour now.” It’s clear no one in their party knows what to say to this. “I miss her,” he confesses, the mood going somber. “I never want to be apart from her. Ever. I love her.”

And there’s the alcohol talking.

“Doctor, go and find her,” Donna suggests, ignoring the pathetic, uncharacteristic mushiness of the statement and, as always, demonstrating concern for his well-being. “Maybe it’s better if the three of you talk together.”

“Or if not, you can at least tell her how you’re feeling. Ask when you two can talk alone,” Martha adds, nodding in agreement. “It’s worth a try.”

“I mean, be polite, though,” Donna adds, scrunching up her nose to indicate she doesn’t endorse him breaking anything else.

He straightens his posture and clears his throat, trying to look the part. “Right.” He gets to his feet a bit shakily, pushing the chair into the table and trying to breathe normally as the blood drains from his head and little spots appear in his vision at the rapid change in position.

“You think she’ll want to stay with me?”

“I think she won’t want to leave either of you,” Donna answers immediately, but it sounds like almost _too_ diplomatic of an answer. Even knowing Rose only a combined few hours, she comes up with the same answer he’s been hoping for in his head. He wants to believe it’s true, but just because she doesn’t want to _leave_ either of them doesn’t mean she won’t have already formed a sort of preference to one over the other.

“I don’t think she will either. Or, I don’t think she’ll want to. But maybe that’s just the human part of me talking.” He’s more than a little disgusted by the fact that he can’t distinguish the origin of any of his thoughts, whether or not they’re being swayed by human instincts and emotions. “Maybe she’ll want to choose one. Maybe he’ll make her choose.”

“Shut it, space man.” Donna holds up a finger in warning. She never did let him go needlessly down a dark path if she had any say in it. “Now, go and talk to her!” she grits out, emphasizing each syllable with a degree of exasperation that means he’d better listen or she’ll start shouting or hitting him with things. In fact, she does hit him. She gets up, and he turns obediently for the door, but she hits him. With her stack of cards. On his bum. He turns back with little more than a gasp and raised eyebrows before scuttling out of the kitchen. She’s only trying to help.

He stands in the empty hall for several seconds, listening to the clamor from the kitchen and the adjacent media room where Sarah and Jackie have put on an old film with a few glasses of wine, and wondering where his counterpart has stolen off the love of his tiny little life to. It’s truly embarrassing how long it takes him to realize that the other Doctor has the same exact thought processes that he does. Wherever he would have taken her to talk, that’s where they’ll be. Damned alcohol. He hardly had two glasses!

Well, anyway, the first place he’d have thought of would be his room. It’s certainly the most private location he can think of. He can’t help but start worrying as he makes his way down the hall, lights brightening with his footsteps, because if Rose is ready to talk with him, what is going to say? He has no idea how this dynamic is going to work, or if it even _can_ work.

Maybe his double will want to talk with him first. Tell him off, even. He’s certainly second-class in his eyes; he made that very clear when he condemned his actions on the Crucible. And didn’t hesitate for a second to be the one to take control of the TARDIS once they were all aboard, _delegating_ tasks to him, just like any of the other humans. He guesses he’s sufficiently human now that his counterpart felt him deserving of that demotion. He did his best not to show how insulting it was at the time, mostly because he was positioned next to Rose, and he can’t seem to do anything but smile in her company now. But he doesn’t know if he can keep putting up with it in the future. The TARDIS is his, just as much as the other Doctor’s, and he understands and cares for her the same as before the metacrisis.

But more importantly, he loves Rose just the same as the other him. If not _more_. There’s a unique human quality to his feelings for her now… he feels more vulnerable to it, even helpless. All he’s wanted to do since they saved the universe is run around yelling how much he loves her.

Though, on top of that, there’s this mad, uncontrollable craving for sex he can’t turn off, no matter how hard he tries.

As a Time Lord, he had a substantial amount of control over the timing and degree of his arousal, unless he _wanted_ to lose control. But he has no semblance of control over it now. It’s been several years since he’s had a shag (Rose, of course, being the only one in his tenth body), and he’s really feeling those years now. Now that the Daleks are gone ( _for now_ , he muses bitterly) and the Earth is protected, he can hardly go thirty seconds without thinking about it.

He always fancied Rose, and making love to her was always incredible. But for him, it was more of a way to demonstrate his affection, especially since he couldn’t quite say the words she wanted to hear. To finally connect his mind with someone else’s for the first time since the war. It was more about the emotions and intimacy than the sensations for him, before, and though he did very much enjoy the physical aspects, Rose was often the more randy of the pair of them. The one who pounced as soon as the TARDIS doors closed after a brush with death. The one who wanted another go when scarcely fifteen minutes had passed since the first. Of course, he had no issue with that whatsoever. And took immense joy and pride in pleasing and satisfying her.

But right now, he’s quite convinced it won’t quite be the case anymore. They might be in for a bit of role reversal. That is, if they’re in for anything at all. His fate’s still a bit up in the air, the fog even thicker than usual through his substandard radar.

So, yes, a few things a bit different.

Stopping outside the door of his destination, his fist freezes in midair before it can strike when he hears a sound that would be very out of place in a serious conversation.

A moan. From one Rose Tyler.

It’s muffled through the wood, but unmistakable to his ears. His fist falls to his side, and the other clenches opposite, blunt nails digging into his palms, his forearms shaking with the effort not to rip the door from its hinges. Why is the TARDIS letting him hear this!? He screams at her inside his head, his thoughts devoid of any explicit words, little more than a raging, crimson stream of consciousness, assuming she can still understand.

But the TARDIS is utterly silent. His own voice calls out from inside, her name sharing a breath with a desperate groan.

The wood of the door swirls and hazes with gray in front of his eyes, his hearing fades until the world around him is muted. His legs go weak and some invisible hand closes around his single heart, constricting it until every beat expends tremendous effort. Aches in his chest. Hot moisture wells up in his eyes and his arms are shaking again with the need to punch something.

So he wheels around and does just that, slamming his good fist into the opposite wall of the hallway, yelping with the instant, aching and shooting pain it inflicts on his knuckles. Knees buckling underneath him, he slides down the wall and crumples to the floor, cradling his injured hand near his chest as a few rebellious tears slip from his eyes.

This was the one thing he had. The one reason he had to accept this new existence, to overlook all the dampened abilities and humanness of himself: being with Rose again after all this time. He didn’t even care how. As long as he could be in the same room with her and look at her and maybe hold her hand now and then. Would he even have that now? Did she only want the original version? Would she even want anything to do with version 2.0 anymore?

He’d rather die than have to carry on without Rose again. Or worse, to see his other self get to be happy with her while he’s kicked to the kerb. Rejected.

The screaming pain in his hand quiets, finally, when he just shuts down, body and mind, because neither of them can bear this. He can’t stay here right outside his room, waiting for its occupants to emerge and accuse him of spying on them. All his thoughts deconstruct and scramble into binary as he gets to his feet, trudging on numb legs down the hall towards the med bay to fix up his hand before anyone notices he’s hurt himself.

Setting a broken finger and sonicking away the bruising keep his mind distracted from the echoing sound of him and Rose together, from tearing the gaping hole in his chest even wider, but once he’s run out of medical tasks, he starts to panic again. He has to bury all this. Pretend he didn’t hear anything, that he couldn’t find them.

But he doesn’t know how he’s going to answer the three of them when they ask ‘ _so, how’d it go!?’_ upon his return without breaking down again. He’s _really_ got to start reining in his emotions better.

But then he thinks of Rose. Not with _him_ , just Rose, as she is. He doesn’t want to make her feel guilty about this, or for her to even know that he found out about it. When she comes to find him later (if she ever does), he has to be able to smile for her, and welcome her with the same open arms, even if he’s second-best. For Rose, he thinks he can pull himself together. He takes a deep, trembling breath as he steels his resolve.

His mates probably think he’s far more inebriated than he really is, because when he enters the kitchen again, none of them suspect he’s lying about not being able to find them. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same old story with me... I'm sorry this took so long! Fair warning for angst. Lots of it. I cried for at least 20 minutes during the writing process. If that freaks you out and you need to know more ahead of time, please feel free message me...
> 
> Please don't be upset with him.

The TARDIS kitchen table is just about the busiest it’s ever been. Sarah Jane is staring at Jack with wide eyes, listening intently as he describes – no, performs is a better word –his first death and resurrection while trying to finish his monstrous slice of chocolate cake. Mickey and Martha are definitely flirting with each other, poking their forks at one another’s pudding. Donna and Jackie are having a good laugh sharing stories about all the reasons why he’s a ‘dumbo.’ And at the furthest end of the table, Rose just laughed so hard she had to set down her champagne glass at his blue-suited duplicate’s enthusiastic and rather graphic delivery of the story of how Mr. Halpen became an Ood. But the various conversations around him slowly fade out of the Doctor’s awareness. He’s not much in the mood for all the merriment, anymore.

He has a responsibility to stay cautious and pensive, he supposes, and not let his guard down for too long. Davros’s fiery (and regrettably true) accusations still ring in his ears, hazy visions of the friends surrounding him threatening to blow up the Earth and faces of people whose death he’s caused flash behind his eyes. Besides, more passengers than he’s had aboard the TARDIS for decades need looking after, to ensure they don’t get into trouble. The large crowd isn’t as easy for him to handle as one or two companions, but then, he’d by lying to say the ship won’t feel hauntingly empty once they’ve all gone home.

Despite watching the Crucible go up in flames, he can’t seem to maintain his mind in a celebratory state. The sight of Rose and his part-human doppelganger giggling across the table makes his stomach turn. He’s been subconsciously avoiding them both since towing the Earth back home, at a loss for how to breach the subject with either of them. They can hardly start a ménage-a-trois lifestyle aboard the TARDIS, whether it’s the stuff of Jack Harkness’ fantasies or not.

He just downed the last of his glass of red with a puckered grimace but of course, it’s not doing anything. Can’t while he’s this keyed up. Not to mention it tastes bloody awful. He decides to forget about trying to relax and just go for more banana cake rather than refill his glass with something stronger.

Just as he’s about to slice his second piece, he sees Rose touch _his_ arm out of the corner of his eye. He drops the knife on the cake, leaving an imprint in the previously pristine frosting. Abandoning the plate on the counter, he makes for the hallway, smiling at Donna when he accidentally makes eye contact with her, not wanting to seem suspicious. He’s positive he won’t be missed from the group, with the tipsy _human_ version of himself impressing and amusing everyone so much, and he simply can’t bear to watch the two of them.

But once he’s finally in the dark hallway, his sigh of relief is tainted with misery. Two obstinate, very unpleasant thoughts creep into his mind now that he’s alone again. The first, that he’s one hundred percent sure it won’t be long before Donna’s entirely human brain starts to overload and burn with a partially Time Lord consciousness crammed inside. And the second, that he _should_ be leaving the room, that he’s doing the right thing. He _should_ be the one to bow out of this love triangle of doom. He doesn’t know much about the man who shares his face, per se, but he knows he can’t have any regenerations in him. And that he must be a fairly good percentage human, based on his knowledge of the metacrisis process. He’ll probably age at a rate much closer to a human than a Time Lord. A rate Rose deserves.

“Hey,” Rose’s voice calls out quietly, making him jump several inches off the ground. She sidles up next to him where he’s leaning against the wall, and he shoves a hand through his hair to distract it from reaching for her.

“Hi,” he blurts out, and even this tiny word cracks halfway through. Clearing his throat quickly, he adds, “All right, Rose? Isn’t that banana cake brilliant? If only we had some of those edible ball bearings…”

“Doctor, what’s wrong?” she asks, not fooled in the slightest by his cheerful façade.

“Nothing’s wrong! Right as rain! Why do you ask?” Despite his attempts to sound unperturbed and casual, it’s the moment the first tear chooses to aggregate from his watery eyes and slide down his cheek. Rose’s thumb catches it before it reaches his jaw, and his eyes close as he leans into her hand, pushing out a few more droplets. Any words he can think of to rationalize the outburst die on his lips as the other hand cradles his face and her thumbs spread the tears across his cheeks until they’re dried. Warmth and the soothing, salty lavender scent of his dreams radiate from her soft, delicate palms and fingers and he never wants her to let him go.

“’S gonna be all right,” she whispers, certain it’s the truth, making his eyes flutter open. There’s such profound concern for him in her eyes, mingling with that twinkling hope that she’s always stood for in his life.

He just barely nods, humors her, because vocalizing the lie would be too much.

“C’mere.” Her hands slide away from his face and he almost panics that this is it, the only reassurance he’ll get, but she takes one of his hands firmly in hers and tugs lightly, away from the kitchen. “We can talk about it, yeah?” she suggests.

“Rose, it’s fine. I’m all right, really.” She can’t be dragging him off away from their mates. From witnesses. She doesn’t belong with him anymore, not when there’s a fresh, part-human version of him back in the kitchen, with a zest for life that he’s all but lost, all too eager to spend his normal-length life with her.

“Shut it, Doctor, we haven’t had a second alone together since I came back, so you’re gonna talk, like it or not.” All he wants to do is press her against the wall and snog her senseless. And only when she’s clay in his hands, reconnect his desolate, starving mind with hers and drink from that glowing fountain until he’s fit to burst. Definitely not the chivalrous thing to do, when he might be planning to recant his affections and remove himself from her life entirely.

 _Might_ , being the operative word. He can’t say no to her. Hard as he tries. If she asked to stay with him, he wouldn’t deny her that.

So he finds himself in his room, watching Rose with undivided attention, his eyes as fixed on her as his trainers are to the floor. He admires the new boldness in her gaze and confidence in her gait as she reacquaints herself with its layout, wandering around the perimeter of the room. His lips turn up to mirror her smile automatically as she admires some of the new objects he’s picked up over the years, picking up items off his nightstand and wardrobe and turning them over in her hands. But his breath catches in his throat at the precise moment that she notices that all of the belongings she’d moved in here years before are gone from the space.

“All my things back in my room, then?” she asks, her tone somber.

He presses his lips together to keep the bottom one from wobbling, pausing for a long moment before nodding slowly.

“How long ago?” The words are barely audible.

He clenches his fists in his pockets, fidgeting in his shoes and taking a deep breath.

“Nevermind. Don’t tell me,” she resigns, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Were you all right, while I was gone?”

“Not at first,” he confesses quickly.

“Martha and Donna though, they’re lovely.”

“Oh, yeah,” he agrees heartily, nodding his head. “And brilliant,” he adds, smiling with the pride the various recollections inspire.

“You’re lucky to have ‘em.”

“Quite.”

Rose laughs nervously, and he chuckles with a tentative smirk, both of them manifesting a kind of nervous energy that reminds him of the first day he was in this body, and they were testing the waters of the new dynamic. She was afraid he wasn’t quite the same man, and he was afraid she wouldn’t want to stay with him anymore, that she would want the other Doctor too much. (Funny how little the circumstances have changed in four years.) The heated electricity in the air excited him then, because it meant he still had a chance with her, foreshadowed all the chemistry and flirting later igniting into so much more. The same magnetism hums between them now, as they teeter on the cusp of something equally monumental. But he can’t give into this.

“How long’s it been for you?” she asks suddenly.

“Three years. Or two, depending on how you look at it. What about you?”

“Closer to five.”

“Seems about right. Time moves faster in that universe…” he muses, thinking back to Bad Wolf bay, when several months had passed to only one of his. “I’m sorry,” he adds sincerely, his mouth twisting into a deep frown.

“Don’t be. You did everything you could.”

“And you.” He offers her a lopsided smile. Several people helped to save the multiverse today, but if Rose hadn’t started working for Torchwood in her universe, they’d all be scattered into atoms by now. His defender of the Earth. He pushes off the wall from his shoulder blades, taking several steps closer to the bed, unable to resist her pull much longer. Blimey, he’s so bloody proud of her. And in awe of her. He would swear to any known deity she has never looked as beautiful as she does now.

“So, this other Doctor…”

He bites his cheek, stopping in his tracks. Did she have to change the subject to _this_? It’s hard enough for him to come to terms with the fact that he may just relinquish every last desire he’s ever had to _him_. He doesn’t want to accelerate the countdown from hell by discussing it with Rose ahead of schedule.

“He’s alive because of what you did? Because you didn’t change?”

His forehead scrunches down, eyebrows pulling together as shoves his hands into his pockets to give them a place to clench into fists without attracting attention.

“Yeah. He grew out of that hand. The one that got lopped off by the Sycorax leader.” He holds up his right hand, rotating it in the air as the memories of his first day in this body flood back. “Cryo-chamber’s empty. The hand itself’s gone.”

“He’s exactly like you,” she breathes, incredulous. He knows that, even better than she does. She doesn’t really know, in fact, that he’s _exactly_ like him, because he _is_ him. Thoughts, memories… everything was transferred over. But he can’t muster the courage to say it, not yet. Competing for her affection is something he’s always loathed down to his possessive core, and he isn’t prepared to do it tonight, with the premonitions of a permanently lonely future tugging at the threads of his already unstable mind. Pulling him apart from the inside.

So he doesn’t make any further comment.

For just this fleeting moment, he allows himself to be selfish, to believe he’s the original, the one-and-only, the true Doctor she fought her way back to. So he stays silent, staring down at the carpet rather than meeting curious, questioning eyes that will beg for more information about the clone on the other side of the ship.

The one he can sense persistently in the back of his mind. It’s not a communication line – far from it – just a nagging sense that there’s another Time Lord consciousness in the vicinity. Though it’s much more faint than it should be, a flimsy, confused telepathic energy that’s more bothersome than reassuring but that he’s too cerebrally sensitive to ignore. A puppy whimpering in the corner that he doesn’t have the energy to shout at.

He takes the last couple of steps towards the bed, a hand reaching for her cheek, fingers stroking the flushed skin there. Her eyes close with the contact, and she swallows hard, biting back something more vocal. Despite everything he’s afraid will come to fruition in the next twenty-four hours, he can’t stop himself from touching her. He fantasized and hallucinated and longed for it too many long months to hold himself back when she’s _here_ , in his room and sitting on his bed and talking to him, really and truly here. Not a mirage, his imagination, or a dream he’ll wake up from in a moment with red eyes and heaving breaths.

“I…” He finishes the sentence a thousand ways in his head in a matter of seconds. English mixed with Gallifreyan.

_Love you._

_Missed you._

_Want you._

_Need you._

“Still can’t believe you’re here,” he finishes, hating himself and his cowardice. It’s so much less poignant than the other possibilities swirling through his mind, doesn’t do their physical reunion justice in the slightest.

“Me neither,” she agrees halfheartedly, seemingly just as let down by his declaration as he is.

He lets his hand drop from her face, and swivels around to sit next to her on the edge of his bed, taking a deep breath, steeling himself to uphold his boundaries for their level of intimacy tonight.

“It’s wonderful to see you, Rose.” His hands clutch at the duvet, because otherwise they’d be on her body somewhere, touching her anywhere they could, coaxing him to take more, to take everything he wants. He smiles, an attempt to conceal the potent desire she must see in his eyes by now, but it’s weak and unconvincing. Moving his mouth at all only reminds him how much he wants to bring it to hers, to feel and taste her again, consumed more and more by the overwhelming urge with every word.

“I never thought…” He gulps.

Then Rose throws her arms around his waist, crushing herself to him, pressing her cheek against his chest and fisting her hands in his jacket. He can’t help the soft moan that escapes him as he draws her against him, pressing his face in her hair and inhaling the scent, all his calculated reluctance waning with the nostalgia flowing through him. He counts her breaths as her ribs expand against his arms, absorbs that warm human body temperature until it thaws out the ice in his chest, her curves even softer and more pliant against his wiry frame than he remembered. It ignites that spark of human inside of him, lighting a fire of passion deep in his gut that makes him feel so, thoroughly alive. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever let her go.

“Doctor, tell me what’s wrong.” She’s crying, though she tries to cover up the sound and his suit absorbs the tears. She always knows. He likes to think he’s good at keeping up the pretense, masking his emotions so no one can decipher them, but Rose always interprets him correctly.

Oh, he hates when she cries. His first instinct is, of course, to unleash all the intimidating fury of a Time Lord on whoever’s upset her, but this time there’s no one to blame but himself. And right now he’s prepared to do anything she asks to make her stop.

“It’s nothing, darling.” His lips and tongue tingle from the use of such an affectionate term, some self-preserving instinct in his shadowy mind warning him to back off. But he rubs his hands in soothing strokes up and down her back, because he can’t imagine the thought of not comforting her. “It’s been an exhausting day, is all. Everything Davros said…” He stops himself before he can make himself too vulnerable. “And I haven’t slept in… oh. Few weeks.” It’s not so much a lie as an… omission of the truth, but it still physically pains him on its way out of his mouth. A stabbing sensation in one of his hearts.

“You’re… sure?” she gasps with the effort not to sob.

“I’m sure,” he affirms. Another uncomfortable twinge of that blade inside.

“Will you just hold me for a while?” she asks, voice still trembling.

“Of course, Rose,” he shushes her, hugging a little tighter.

“I missed you.” Her words are smothered against his chest, instilling even more pain and guilt into his hearts even through every layer of clothing and skin he’s got.

“Oh, Rose,” he breathes. He readjusts them, hooking his arm under her thighs and swinging her legs onto his lap, cradling her against him, maximizing the contact between them. Barely contains himself from echoing the sentiment aloud, still crippled with fear that this won’t turn out the way he wants, that the self-sacrificing part of him will bow out. And he’s unwilling to take the risk of revealing too much, tries to protect himself though his entire being craves to give her everything. He acutely remembers what it’s like, to give in to her, the way her touch fills the emptiness inside of him and her kisses erase all the lonely thoughts from his mind, how immersive and restorative is a single intimate evening with Rose Tyler.

“It’s all right, Rose. Everything will be all right.” It’s not a lie. Really, it’s not. Not to her. No matter what happens, Rose can spend the rest of her life with him. But it’s still not what he wants to say, or what she deserves to hear from him.

She pulls back, pink-tinted eyes locking with his in the dim light of the room.

“Kiss me.”

Oh, no.

“Rose.” There’s disapproval in his tone, warning in the set of his jaw when he shakes his head slightly, just once.

“You…” She swallows hard and looks away from him, her jaw quivering as she tries to stay strong. “You don’t want me anymore.”

“Rose, _no_.” He cups her face with one hand, pleading with her to turn to him again. “No,” he repeats when she finally glances up at him through her lashes. “I’ll _always_ want you.” He speaks each word carefully, emphatically. “That’s not it.”

“Then wha’…” Her voice is barely a whisper, and she trails off, a look of apprehension still on her face like whatever explanation he thinks up will somehow hurt even worse. He can hardly bear it, to see the rejection and fear and know he put it there.

“I… it’s…” he stammers, racing through all his mind’s widest highways but finding nothing of use to him. His thumb and index finger rub over his eyes aggressively, if only to buy him time outside the intensity of Rose’s gaze.

She starts to pull away again, prying his hand from her face and moving to climb off of his lap. He stays her, tugging her in closer against his chest.

“Rose, please, it’s… it’s him. The other… Doctor. You should talk with him.” All right, well. Looks like he’s not getting through the night without bringing _him_ up again. There was just nothing else he could say, that she’d believe, that wouldn’t make her think he didn’t want her.

“ _He’s_ who you’re thinkin’ about?”

“It doesn’t seem… fair. To him.” He grimaces. Blimey, this is terrible. They were never supposed to be talking about _him_. _His_ mere existence has ruined any hope that had bubbled up in his sappy hearts earlier today of spending the next several decades with her. _He’ll_ always be there, no matter what happens, in the back of his mind, taunting him with his single human heart and lifespan. And here he is, prepared to give up what may be his last private encounter with Rose to the lucky bastard, too.

Except, it’s not for _his_ sake that he’s prepared to sacrifice it. Something about letting them go through with this before he’s decided which of the two plans festering in his head he’ll go through with doesn’t sit well with him.

“I will. I will talk to him.” She curls her fingers against his jacket, reminding him her hands are still on him, and his hearts beat just a little faster. “I was always goin’ to. I just… I don’t feel ready for…” She leaves silence in place of a few words but he fills in the gaps instantly. “With _him_ yet. And… I’ve missed you so much…” She bites her lip, stopping the flow of emotion before she reveals too much.

He takes in a shaky breath, releasing it slowly for an excuse to think.

She wants this. Wants him. He can see it in her eyes, glassy and dark with longing. And his only scapegoat isn’t going to work.

But why can’t he have her?

Why does the carbon copy deserve her, more than he does?

What gives _him_ the right to take her from him?

Maybe he’s been thinking about this all wrong. Rose doesn’t want to fall asleep in the arms of that other man, doesn’t feel comfortable kissing _him_. And it’s rational, the thought process she’s having. She doesn’t know anything about this other Doctor, just how human he is or the fact that he really is the same man where it counts. The only information she has is that one Doctor is in brown, and hasn’t left her side since she returned to this universe, and the other is in blue and only came into existence hours ago.

Anyone would draw the conclusion that the one in blue is, by nature of being duplicated from an original, inferior. But with Rose’s compassion and open mind, all she needs is time to see that she can love him, too. And she will. She’ll fall in love with that part-human replica, and before long she’ll see that he’s right. _He’s_ perfectly suited for her. No mismatched life spans, none of the accountability requisite to immortality.

Rose squirms, impatient with his indecision. She’s made it perfectly clear that the only one she wants tonight is the one whose lap she’s currently seated on.

Can’t he have this? Just for one night, can’t he have what he wants? What they _both_ want?

“Please,” she breathes. “I just need to be close to you.”

Ohhhh, heavens help him. He can’t resist her when she pleads like this.

Only a few inches separate their mouths, and he measures the distance carefully as they teeter on the precipice, ready to tumble off the cliff one way or another.

Tilting his head to one side, he brings his mouth to hers, a gentle brush of his lips that gives her nothing more than what she asked for. One kiss. His mouth lingers close to hers as she gasps out a hot, trembling breath against his lips, but he stays still and subservient, giving her the reins to decide if she wants more.

She surges forward, claiming his lips with none of his hesitation or gentleness, hands fisting in his hair to forbid his escape (as if he’d want it).

Time Lords have excellent memories, relatively speaking. But a kiss from Rose Tyler is something too exquisite for even his superior sensory archives to preserve in perfect detail. The lush, silken contours of her lips belying the fierce passion in their movements. The heady rush of epinephrine and estradiol on her tongue as it slides against his. The little moans in the back of her throat that gently plead for more.

She readjusts herself, hands clutching his neck so she can twist and jostle them to straddle his thighs without separating their mouths. All his awareness of reality and notions of responsibility slip from his grasp as she overwhelms each of his senses, touch and taste and sound attuned only to her. The feel of her pressed against him constrains the galaxies constantly swirling through his mind to a singular orbit: Rose.

It’s happening too fast. He silently pleads with time, commands it to slow down for them, but it doesn’t obey. His teeth nip at her throat while she catches her breath and fumbles with his tie. She rolls forward, stirring his length from a long slumber, feels him harden beneath her and repeats the motion. Again and again until she coaxes her name from his tongue and he groans long and low against her neck. There’s the muffled snap of plastic, the rustle of fabric and the sharp swish of metallic teeth, buttons and zippers coming undone and clothes crumpling to the floor.

He clambers back on the duvet and she pushes him down, kissing him hard. He reaches for her temples purely on instinct, his fingertips tingling with the impulse to connect their minds, but guilt stops them at her cheeks, concealing it as a display of passion instead.

They’re really going to do this, and the doubts that she washed away with her persistent affection flow ashore again, warning him not to go through with it.

It’s not fair. Rose is with him right now, for what may be the last time, and she’s craving something she can’t get from anyone else. If he turns her down now, he’ll only be dosing out the heartbreak prematurely, making what may be their concluding intimate encounter one that will always hurt her when she remembers it. For once in his life he isn’t going to waste the time he has left. For once, he isn’t going to steamroll her wishes. He only hopes she’ll be able to forgive him.

Tucking thoughts of his Other and the future into a crevice where they can’t be reached (his mind’s much stronger than hers), thinking only of Rose and what she wants, closeness and sex and security, his hands drift higher and he opens the link.

The depth of emotion cascading from the bright tendrils of her mind knocks the breath out of him. The sheer, unyielding power of her unconditional love is bewildering, a flood of pleasure as much as a punch to the gut, something he can never prepare himself to experience. It’s so, _so_ human. The way it’s soft around the edges, though, warm and blanketing itself around him, and presses itself into the deepest pits of self-loathing with such determination, makes it so distinctly Rose. Caring and stubborn as she is.

The minutes pass and he immerses himself in her completely, his awareness limited to where they’re skin against skin, warm curves molding to his lean build. They share the building friction between them and the pleasant shivers of light touches and neck kisses. She floods his thoughts with blossoms of affection and surges of comforting warmth and he swears there’s nothing better than this.

He won’t leave her.

The metacrisis is little more than an accident; the fact that he blundered into existence slightly more biologically appropriate for her is irrelevant. He’s the one Rose fought her way back to for five years, the one she deserves. He loses everyone that’s ever important to him, but Rose is back in his arms now and he’ll be damned if he lets anyone take her from him without a fight.

His thoughts last hardly longer than lightning strikes, from a human perspective, but Rose still catches the gist.

 _Not goin’ anywhere_ , she says through their direct line.

He doesn’t respond. Only refocuses his straying thoughts, concentrates on her and gives her body his devout attention, makes her squirm and gasp above him, blinds her with the indulgence of it. Reassures her how he feels about her without words. The words are forbidden to him, mental or not, as long as their commitment is still pending.

Somehow he ends up above her and there’s nothing between them now, no more layers. She begs him with hands scrambling on his backside, and he joins them together, the final piece of their union clicks into place, completing the picture. He can feel it as he delves and stretches inside that it’s been too long for her, so he goes slow, a centimeter at a time, calling on his centuries of patience. Presses his lips everywhere he can, hair, eyelids, nose, cheeks, and lips (he swallows a soft cry as he slides in a little deeper), while she adjusts to him.

It’s immaculate, being surrounded by her like this, mentally and physically.

But though he likes to think time is at his command, it betrays him when he needs it the most. It races by too quickly for him to keep up, lost as he becomes in the push and pull of their bodies, the overheated, damp slide of skin against skin. There’s at least two of his thrusts forward to every tick of the secondhand echoing in his ears, and he can’t seem to stop the gears turning.

He tries. Slows to only one rock of his hips for every hurtling second, but though the movement is slower the time passes just the same. Second after second, reminding him, driving in that knife he’s already too familiar with. _Nothing lasts forever_. He closes his eyes just as tears leak from the corners and he slows his pace down further, squeezing her tighter against him with all the strength he has left.

She feels the tears drip on her chest, and her hand reaches for his face, wipes the falling droplets with the pad of her thumb.

“Hey,” she croons, making him look at her. He stops moving altogether, buried deep inside her. A tsunami of encouragement and compassion breaks at the shore where their minds meet, knocking down towering edifices of fear, rinsing away guilt, flooding over that incessant clock and drowning out the noise. And there’s only the quiet, lovely melody of her voice floating through the cleansed air in the aftermath: _I love you._

He brings his mouth to hers and kisses her, with the gentlest of pressure like she’ll shatter under his touch, his mental wavelengths pulsing gratitude and the most intense, wordless Gallifreyan equivalent of love back across the mutual waters.

She has to pull away for air, and he starts shaking again.

“Take my hand,” she whispers, holding her hand out on the duvet, palm facing up. It’s what they’ve always done when they’re in trouble, ran straight for the danger hand in hand. Whenever they need reassurance, whenever they’re afraid, it’s the gesture that gives them both the courage they can’t muster on their own. He weaves his fingers through hers, and breathes a sigh of relief. Nothing in the universe could ever feel so right.

“I’ve missed you, Rose.” He starts to move again, slow, savoring the sensations. “So much.”

“I know.” Her eyes well up and her bottom lip wobbles but she holds herself together. For him. “But ‘m here now.”

“You’re here now,” he murmurs back, making it his only reality. Stamping down the fear.

“Everything’s all right.” She sends smaller waves of affection, little pieces of her heart to him. They open up his lungs, dry up his eyes, send the apprehensions of an unknown tomorrow scattering away.

“Mmm, yes,” he breathes, driving forward a little faster. Focuses on her, and nothing else. She’s so beautiful. Her lips parted with pleasure, hazel eyes swelling with emotion as they lock with his. Soft, trembling ivory curves and golden hair contrast strikingly with the deep browns of the duvet and pillowcase. Dark pink nipples decorate perfect breasts that ripple with energy as their bodies collide. Every cry, gasp, and moan from her swollen lips is gorgeous as it filters through his ears.

She only lasts a few more moments with all his mental strength fixated on her like this, arching and shuddering beneath him with a final, breathy cry, pulling him into carnal paradise with her. Their climax stretches on for what feels like minutes, pulsations and contractions of pleasure amplifying one another as they meet. Her hand squeezes around his as they climb over the peak, her name like worship on his lips, their connection molten and fuzzy with bliss.

They float down from the apex together and he slowly retreats from of her mind, but doesn’t separate their bodies just yet. Keeps her hand securely in his.

He kisses her deeply, savoring the taste of their coupling from her mouth, flooded with aromatic hormones that make his head spin even now. It might just be his egotistical imagination, but he thinks she tastes like him, too. Just a little. Essence of Doctor, just beneath the layers of sweet, delectable Rose.

He rolls them over, and she cuddles into him, pressing her hands into his chest and burying her face in his shoulder. He pulls the blanket at the foot of the bed over them, and they both sigh with content, exhausted.

“Thank you, Rose,” he breathes into her hair.

“Love you,” she whispers, warm against his neck, the words slurred with lethargy.

She may not realize she's said it out loud, but he wants more than anything to say it back. He kisses her forehead instead, his lips lingering there for several moments.

He will say it. He just… has to figure out what lies ahead of them.

“Sleep well.”

He isn’t going to close his eyes, not while he’s uncertain of the day ahead. He just basks in her closeness and warmth, stroking his fingers along her smooth skin lightly enough that it won’t rouse her. He fights to keep the ominous thoughts that nearly strangled him before at bay for as long as he can, he really does. Makes it a couple of hours before the fortress of peace Rose built for him caves in.

Without her awake and actively holding gauze to his wounds, not reassuring him from within that she’ll always be there, the clunking hands of the clock are set in motion again. The high of lovemaking starts to fade, as time resumes the breakneck speed it prefers when there is something dreadful on the horizon, and the part-human man across the ship bursts through the doors of his mind again.

The man that’ll never hurt her, that won’t outlive her by centuries. The one logic tells him she needs, even though he desperately wants to say he deserves her more, that he’s earned the right to have her choose him instead. Even though the thought of losing her again carves out his chest until he can hardly breathe. Even though his future never looks darker than when he peers down a road where she’ll never be by his side. There’s nothing he wouldn’t give to be the man that gets to keep her for the rest of his life.

What’s he ever done so wrong to deserve this? To have the only person he’s loved since the war taken from him, over and over?

No. He can’t keep making this about himself. It’s about her, and the indisputable fact that she deserves a lifetime of happiness, even if it’s not with him.

He wraps himself around her, touching skin everywhere he can, and the quiet rhythm of her slow breaths eases the aching tension in his chest, calms the heaving of his lungs. He inhales the scent of flowers and perspiration and sex, brushes his lips against a salty, heated cheek, committing the sensations to memory. Fights back against the monsters inside him trying to divert his focus to that shadowed, lonely timeline he’ll inevitably face in the morning. Shutting out his prescient abilities, he closes his eyes and sinks into warm skin and soft curves, tethering himself to the present.

She’s not gone yet. He can still hold her as long as she needs to sleep. His Rose, for one last night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long!! (as always, huh?) This chapter doesn't hurt nearly as bad as the last one, promise. The calm before the storm, if you will. Hope you guys are still enjoying my angsty spin on this. Infinite thanks to Amber for supporting me through this when I struggled and wanted to quit. And thanks to Kristina for the beta!

Rose groans at the blurry yellow lights shining from the fuzzy ceiling. She doesn’t know what’s woken her, but somewhere deep in the recesses of her sleepy brain, she wonders why the lights are still on when the TARDIS always used to turn them off while she was unconscious.

As little time as it feels like it’s been since she drifted off, and as exhausted as she is, her brain won’t shut down enough for her to fall back to sleep. Rubbing the heels of her hands against her eyes and blinking to right her vision, she realizes she can no longer feel the solid warmth of the Doctor’s body against hers. She lolls her head to the side and smiles weakly at the sight of dark, unruly hair against his pillowcase.

To her surprise, he’s sound asleep, the duvet folded down to his waist, one arm above his head and the other lying limp across his bare chest. Half-naked always has suited him quite nicely. All the earlier anxiety is gone from around his eyes, lids gently closed and forehead smooth, the hand on his chest lightly rising and falling with his occasional, slow breaths.

Her conscience, however, hardly allows her a moment to stare at him before its incessant shouting pulls her even further from continued slumber. She hadn’t intended to ever fall asleep with him and never return to the others; she’d told the _other_ him that she’d be back shortly, that she only wanted to talk with the one in brown to make sure he was all right. She hadn’t made up her mind about her intentions with him until they were alone – and they were on his bed and his arms were around her and and she lost the strength to hold herself back any longer.

As much as she wants to snuggle up to this Doctor, maybe even press a kiss to his unsuspecting lips until he stirs, until his arms wrap around her and he pulls her up on top of him, deepening the kiss and breathing out a sleepy moan… she can’t.

She shakes her head and rubs her fingers over her eyes to dispel the fantasies. She needs to find the other Doctor.

She rolls out of bed as silently as she can, but before she can take her first step she has to steady herself on the nightstand as the room tilts and sways, flecks of black flooding her vision.

She really does need more sleep, apparently.

Kneeling down to gather her trousers and shirt from the floor, she bundles them in her arms as she heads into his en suite. She checks items off an impromptu list in her head to freshen up: runs her fingers through her tangled hair, washes her face, borrows the Doctor’s deodorant. Whatever she can do to make a halfway convincing case to the Doctor in blue that she wasn’t recently tangled in a sweaty heap with his counterpart.

She feels weird even thinking it, but as she tiptoes around the bed for the door, she wonders whether the new, new, new Doctor has the same sensory acuity that this Doctor does. If he’ll be able to detect what they’ve done despite her efforts, some scent or visual clue imperceptible to her.

Glancing back at the bed one last time as she reaches the door to confirm the Doctor hasn’t roused, her heart constricts in her chest, because he hasn’t stirred even an inch. How exhausted he must be to not wake the moment her feet hit the carpet as he normally does. How long it must’ve been since he’d really slept. But she tucks those thoughts away as best she can, because the other Doctor needs her, too.

After seeing the TARDIS as bustling with conversation and laughter as it had been that evening, walking through the winding corridor now it feels eerily quiet. And the floor is frigid beneath her feet; she should’ve grabbed her socks before leaving behind the superior climate control of the Doctor’s room. Peeking into each open door she comes across, she starts to taking a head count of everyone she finds in the darkened rooms. On finding all of them unconscious on various shared couches and beds, she suddenly realizes what a stupid idea this may be.

This Doctor in blue, earlier he and Donna said something about him being part human. Something about the metacrisis. Whatever that meant. (The Doctor in brown had been staunchly silent on the matter, but she could understand why, so she hadn’t pressed it.) Does he need more sleep than the few hours the original usually scrapes by with, having whatever fraction of human that he does?

Even if not, it’s likely he’ll be asleep, too.

As she makes her peace with the realization, she sighs to the empty hallway but doesn’t stop her search. She doesn’t relish the thought of waking him after the day they’ve had, but it’s better for him to be woken prematurely than to wake in the morning thinking it never crossed her mind to check on him.

All the guests on the TARDIS have been accounted for in the media room and a couple extra bedrooms, but the blue-suited Doctor isn’t among them.

The kitchen, the lab, and the garden all turn up empty.

Just as she’s shout-whispering his name into the expansive wardrobe, the TARDIS nudges her towards the front of the ship.

She goes quickly.

There’s more than just a faint green glow coming from the console – bright yellow light shines into the hallway. She slows her pace so she doesn’t startle him by stampeding into the room.

His hair, of course, catches her eye first, sticking up from beneath a panel, energy rippling through it with every movement. Stepping closer, it’s obvious that he’s working, specs on and sonic in his teeth as he pulls at some wires and buttons with both hands, face scrunched up just about everywhere.

He jumps when she calls out to him, the sonic dropping gracelessly from his mouth and clattering to the floor.

“Rose!”

If he’s harboring any annoyance that she was able to sneak up on him (as would be custom), pleasant surprise wins out, and he scoops up the sonic and hops up to her level before stuffing it into his jacket.

“Uhm,” he stammers, one hand diving into his trouser pocket and the other into his hair while he thinks of what to say. “Hi.” A tiny grimace turns down his mouth at his choice of greeting.

No ‘where did you go,’ no ‘why didn’t you come back sooner,’ no ‘what were you doing.’ Just ‘hi.’ A nervous, free of judgment‘hi.’

“What are you up to,” she asks, fidgeting her bare feet over the patterns in the grating. The texture of the metal is strangely comforting, even icy as it is on her toes. Years of memories in this room tied up with the feeling.

“Oh, she’s exhausted from the towing trip.” He smiles, but it’s halfhearted; neither his dimples nor the tiny wrinkles around his eyes make an appearance. “Well, and nearly being incinerated. Lots of tune-ups to do, here and there. Figured I’d get a head start before we have to take everyone home in the morning.”

She nods, biting the inside of her cheek. Considerate of him, to take care of it while the others are asleep, with apparently no regard for his own need for rest.

“Aren’t you tired?” she asks, unable to resist the nurturing instinct, useless though it always is when it comes to him.

“No,” he snaps back immediately. She recoils a little, but doesn’t believe him. He _must_ be tired. If the other Doctor is exhausted enough to shut his eyes for the night, and they’re supposed to be the same man, this must to be affecting him, too.

Seeming to realize he’d spoken too quickly, he softens his tone and takes a calming breath.

“Is uhm…” He glances to the corridor, like he’s expecting the one in brown to stroll in on her heels at any moment to cancel their temporary moment of privacy. He shoves his hands in his pockets and changes course as he looks back to her once again. “Is something wrong?” He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, his eyes troubled and his hands fidgeting in his pockets, like he’s trying very hard to conceal something that she can’t quite put her finger on.

“No, I’m… I just… wanted to talk.” Blimey, she’s doing a bang-on job of convincing him she wants to be here so far.

“About what? It’s the middle of the night.”

Is he _trying_ to push her away now? Back to the other one? She’s not sure what would drive him to do that, but she can’t help thinking it.

“Thought time was irrelevant on the TARDIS?” she quips, an edge entering her tone.

“It’s late for you,” he amends, softer than before. Concerned. “You’ve got to be exhausted.”

“So have you.”

“I’m not,” he insists again, shaking his head.

“I just…” She toys with a frayed thread on the jumpseat, needing something to look at besides the expression on his face, longing mixed with muted despair. Something to touch so she won’t go right up to him and stroke his cheek in an attempt to smooth out the tension. The Doctor has never handled jealousy well. Competition well. And as much as she wants to reassure him in the same way she did the other Doctor, she wasn’t lying when she said she wasn’t prepared to return to the level of intimacy they once shared. She wasn’t going to let guilt drive their physical relationship; it had to be as natural and consensual as it began the first time.

“Wanted to make sure you knew I didn’t… I fell asleep by accident. I didn’t mean to… uhm…”

“I know.”

“You know?” She panics, searching those intense brown eyes for an accusation, thinking he somehow knows what they’ve been up to in their extended absence.

“That you weren’t making a decision. Well, not a permanent one, at least.” The way he says ‘well,’ it’s exactly like the other Doctor. It’s as unsettling as comforting, because as familiar as his face and mannerisms are, she still feels like she doesn’t know who this man is. “I hoped you weren’t, anyway.” He looks away with the last sentence, covering up something under the calm façade again.

“Yeah. I wasn’t.” It’s all she can think to say, is to agree with him. There are so many other things she should say, to reassure him that she cares about him, too, but she can’t find the right words.

“I understand.” He smiles, like he’s never tried so hard to pretend he’s all right, that he’s okay with her choice for the first night. But the buried pain behind his eyes almost makes her physically clutch her heart.

She knows, though, there’s nothing she can say to explain herself, not without hurting him even more than she already has. She decides to show him instead, by staying with him for a while. And rather than make him dwell on it, she changes the subject to the less-than-ideal temperature.

“Can we maybe… sit someplace else? It’s bloody freezin’ out here.”

He points out her purple toes with half a chuckle as he wraps her little cold hands in his larger, much warmer ones. He rubs them together before bringing them close to his mouth and exhaling warm air over her fingertips, and she giggles at the defrosting sensation. A hint of a smile appears on his lips as he looks up at her, and he kisses her knuckles before letting her hands drop to her sides.

“Hang on a tick. Sarah and your mum left a blanket in the media room.” He dashes for the corridor in a blur.

When he returns with a plush, purple blanket hardly ten seconds later, she leaps up onto the jump seat and curls up underneath it, wrapping one end under her feet and pulling the other up over her nose, completely cocooned in just a few seconds. He sits as far from her as the chair will allow, no part of his body touching hers, putting the foot closest to her up on the console, and the other up on the chair, resting an arm on his knee.

“Did you steal those from –” she nods to the glasses still on his face before she can catch herself. “Ahh, I mean…”

He turns his gaze to a lever in front of him, and his hands curl into fists as he inhales deeply, letting a few seconds pass before exhaling slowly. It’s almost in sync with the punctuated, echoing breaths of the time rotor. Tempering himself.

“They’re mine.” He swipes off the specs in question from over his eyes, folding them carefully and tucking them somewhere in his jacket with the sonic. But he doesn’t look at her.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t…” She bites her tongue to prevent from saying anything else stupid. God, she’s really cocking it up.

To be fair, the situation is completely without precedent. Despite all the insane things she’s seen and done with the Doctor, she never thought one day she’d be talking a clone of him.

It takes him so long to properly respond that it seems out of the blue when he finally does, tearing his gaze finally away from the slow churn of the green central column to look at her at last.

“It _is_ me, Rose.” She can’t hide the consternation from her features.

“Is it really?”

“Yes.” There’s no hesitation; his eyes are wide and honest, and the set of his jaw has the authority of a Time Lord, and his arm comes to rest on the back of the chair, closing some of the distance between them. As powerful as the single syllable is, it’s even more reassuring to see his confidence briefly bubble to the surface.

“How, though?” She feels terrible for pestering. For asking and asking when he must already be exhausted of explaining. But the idea still isn’t at peace in her mind, not yet. The idea that two versions of the same man can exist, that the copy is somehow just as good as the original.

“Biological metacrisis.” He enunciates the syllables like he’s tasting them all, and he’s got that tone now, the didactic one he always uses when he’s about to explain a new concept to her.

“The… other Doctor, he said that.” She’s careful to insert the word ‘other’ when speaking of that one, though it goes against instinct.

“Just an accident, really. I’ve only heard of it happening a handful of times. Never thought I’d experience it firsthand.”

“Clever,” she giggles.

“Didn’t think you’d notice.” He tries to wrestle his smile away (he’s never liked to let go of a grudge so soon after a remark like that, always wants to stay tetchy), but it breaks through despite his efforts. And blimey, it’s so beautiful. His proper smile has always been one of his best features.

“I always notice your silly puns.”

“Quite.”

“You’re not an accident, though,” she adds more seriously.

“Thanks.” He shrugs like he doesn’t believe it. Like she’s only saying it as recompense for having already wounded him with her earlier words.

“Without you, Donna’d be dead. And if that’d happened, the entire universe would’ve imploded. So don’t try and convince me otherwise.”

“Wouldn’t dream of trying.” He smirks again, knowing how stubborn she still is (perhaps not realizing she’s even more so now than before they were separated).

“Funny, though, isn’t it?” He holds out his right hand, turning it over in front of his face and staring at his palm. “You touched this hand, years ago, when this body was just a few minutes old. Before it got lopped off by the Sycorax leader.”

“I did, yeah. More than that, too, when you passed out on us and I had to get you into a pair of jim jams…” But he’s not listening. His eyes have glazed over, no longer looking at the lines on his palm but staring into the past, silent with remembrance. She can’t help but reminisce, too, on his first moments in this body. Though she was frightened and skeptical at the time, the love for him that’s developed over the years has colored and brightened the memory into one she’s very fond of. One that kept her going on many despondent, lonely nights in the alternate universe. Him, playing with his hair, embracing his new mole, drowning in her first Doctor’s too-large leather jacket, and hopping around with a goofy smile on his face. She smiles like an idiot, even now.

“Even though I’m brand new, I technically still have something he doesn’t,” he finishes his earlier thought, and suddenly she understands the reason he brought it up in the first place. She has no idea how to respond, but her heart aches for him. He’ll probably never stop comparing himself to the other Doctor, the one who came first, and she hates that she’s subconsciously been doing exactly that since the moment she met him.

All the strange things she’s seen traveling with him, she thinks she’s come a long way with accepting alien idiosyncrasies that most people would gawk or scream at. At being more open-minded, in general. But with the Doctor, after learning to cope with the idea of regeneration and the age gap and the two hearts and skin temperature and super senses and all the other biological differences that terrified her at first, eventually she’d become used to them all. After long enough living with him, traveling with him, and (eventually) shagging him, everything that made him different became normal.

When she’d run out of physiological traits to discover and spent a good deal of time connected with his mind where there was little to hide, she stopped being constantly on edge for something else to startle her. And slowly, her readiness to cope with new facets of his foreignness had diminished, because she was certain she’d familiarized herself with them all. And after spending years looking for him, risking her life to find her way back to him, she’d been confident when she returned he’d be much the same, even if he had changed his face, that inside he’d be the same Doctor she’d always known. The quirky, moody, and ever-brilliant Time Lord.

The shock of this Doctor’s existence had snuck up on her while her defenses were down. While she was so relieved he hadn’t regenerated she thought the hardest part of their reunion was over. She can’t quite handle the reality of him instantaneously like she’d have been able to years earlier, while she was still in adaptive learning mode, still getting accustomed to all the nuances that made the Doctor alien.

Easy as it was to fall into bed with the other Doctor tonight, something in her mind won’t let her do the same with the one seated next to her. Something feels unnatural about it that she can’t shake, pursuing a romantic relationship with a duplicate of someone you love while they’re still in your life, watching the whole thing unfold. She’s never been the type of person to date two different blokes at once, let alone a pair of identical twins.

Seeing the indecision and guilt on her face, he changes the mood abruptly by shifting suddenly in his seat, shoving a hand into his trouser pocket and slouching back so he can reach into it down to his elbow.

“What’re you –”

He just holds a finger up to stop her question, fidgeting around in that gigantic pocket of his like mad.

“I know it’s… urgh… in here…”

After a few moments, he pulls out a slip of paper, but quickly reads the contents and sets it down on the seat between them with a huff before his hand dives back into his trousers. She’s about to ask whether it’s a good or bad thing he’s looking for, at least this minimal piece of information, when he cries out.

“HAH!” he exclaims, pulling out another wafer-thin piece of paper. Unfolding it, he scans it over and a huge grin spreads across his face, one that she can’t help but mirror.

He hands it to her, smile never faltering.

It’s a receipt.

She scans down the centered lines of text for more information.

29 July 2012.

Harry Ramsden’s on Westfield.

Two orders of chips.

The sound of roaring crowds and rush hour traffic and the smell of fish and salt are already overwhelming her senses before he starts talking.

“Third night at the games. We were on our way back to the TARDIS. Planned the whole day to cook a nice dinner at home. But you said, three feet from the door…”

“Doctor, I want chips,” they finish his sentence together, and when they laugh together it’s refreshingly natural. Easy.

“Not even promises of my best moves could persuade you against those chips. Not once you’d made up your mind.” He shakes his head.

“I still got to see your moves,” she reminds him, raising one eyebrow.

“Not before you got vinegar in my eye.” He cocks his head to one side, countering her eyebrow raise with a more impressive one of his own.

“It was an accident! That bottle was broken, I’m tellin’ ya! And I apologized so many times!” Even now, she’s trying to assuage him for her mistake, moving closer to him and stroking her hand down his arm through his jacket. It feels good to be close to him, and it’s reassuring that he doesn’t feel different – he’s lean and solid and his suit is starchy and just as tight as she remembers.

“I even got you that banana milkshake you wanted.”

“I know. It was only a drop, really. And with my metabolism? It only hurt for a few seconds.” He peers down at her with a wink.

“Git.” She punches his arm, but scoots even closer, as much of their bodies touching as possible.

“I did make it up to you, didn’t I?” Her voice dips down with the suggestion in her words, and her hand wanders up to his shoulder, playing with the lapel of his jacket.

He clears his throat as his cheeks go pink (something that she thinks never happened to the other Doctor quite so quickly). “Yes, well.”

She chuckles at him, and he returns the sound gratefully.

“I was only teasing you, even then. I had a wonderful time that night.”

“Me too.”

“Why else would I have kept the receipt, all this time?”

“Why _do_ you have it still?” she asks, her hand on his neck now, thumb stroking along the skin bared by the lack of Oxford or tie. His skin’s just as smooth as the other Doctor’s, but it’s warmer. It almost feels like hers, radiating gentle heat.

“I liked having something with me to remind me of you. I found this in our room, a few months after… and it’s just the most recent thing I put in these blue trousers. There’s something in all the suits I have lying around. Little things, like this.”

“You thought about me that much?”

“I’ve missed you, Rose,” he acknowledges. “So much.”

Chills go up her spine.

The other Doctor had breathed out the same exact words, what feels like only minutes ago, near the apex of their impassioned lovemaking.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again,” he goes on, unaware of her déjà vu. “But I was dead set on never forgetting you.” He gently takes the receipt from her and puts it back in his pocket before staring down at his knee.

Her heart swells painfully in her chest at the unexpected confession, and she takes his hand in hers on reflex, the one he’d been musing about just before. And for a fleeting second she wants to kiss him. She thinks he deserves a kiss, especially right now; the other Doctor was certainly starved for affection. As wonderful as it’s been talking to him, and painful as it is to admit it to herself she doesn’t feel ready to give him one. In a way it’s like talking to the other Doctor, reconnecting with him, but in another it’s like kindling a new flame with a complete stranger. The logical part of her brain still harbors skepticism about his existence, and the sewn patchwork of her heart is still apprehensive about giving itself over to him, warning her that something still isn’t right.

For now, though, she thinks of another way to show him she still cares about him.

“Remember when I said I was never gonna leave you?”

He starts a little at that, his head snapping up to look at her, deep creases forming in his forehead at the memory the words conjure. The last time she said that to him was at Canary Wharf, only moments before dimensions tore them apart.

He’s silent for a while, but finally sighs and nods a few times, his eyes falling from hers.

“It’s still true. I’m not gonna leave you, okay?” Though their circumstances have changed, that fact hasn’t, and ditching either one of them would mean breaking that promise.

He stares down at her blanket, his breaths slow and deliberate.

“Okay.” He says it like he knows it’s true, but doesn’t want it to be. It’s so vastly different from when the Doctor used to smile when she promised him forever, when he was convinced it wasn’t true but desperately wanted it to be.

She squeezes against his light grip. He squeezes back instantly, brushing his thumb along the back of her hand.

“Rose, I’m…” He’s already back in the dreadful habit of beginning sentences and taking a great big pause before he finishes them. Whatever he’s about to say, it looks important. His eyes alight with anxious energy, a gulp traveling down the column of his throat, his thumb making strange quick patterns on her hand.

“I’m so glad you’re back.” She’s convinced he chickened out of whatever he was planning to say, but she can’t really pressure him into anything. It’s much less than ideal, this inconvenient love triangle that began when he sprang into existence. She doesn’t want him to be anxious about it, she wants him to feel accepted and loved and not like a second-rate Doctor. But she can’t quite offer all that reassurance right this second, because the truth is she’s still not thinking of him as the ‘proper’ Doctor herself.

“Me too.” She tries to make her smile convey all the hope she has for the future of their relationship, rather than the turbulent emotions she has now.

She has to be okay, eventually, because he doesn’t deserve to be left alone; he didn’t ask for this. But she’s reasonable enough to know it’s going to take her some time to come to terms with it all.

She’s relieved enough by what little conversation they’ve had, though, that when his arm wraps around her and she snuggles into his side, welcoming the warm embrace, she lets out a gigantic yawn. 

He sighs against her hair just as her eyes close.

“You should go back to sleep.” The words are hushed but he’s not quite whispering.

“Still not tired?” she asks, craning her neck up to see his face.

“Nah. I’m gonna get back to work.”

“Don’t work yourself too hard.” She tries for sternness, but another yawn interrupts her words. “You can always get back to it when you wake up. Or he can help, you know, the –”

He flinches at the insinuation of the other Doctor. His fingers curl into her shirt and rage flickers across his features for a split second.

She backtracks immediately. (Blimey, though, somehow they’ve got to be able to be in the same room together.)

“You don’t have to stay awake the whole night, is all.”

“I know. I’m just not tired. Promise. I think it’s ‘cause this body is brand new.”

“New, new, new?” she teases.

“Yep.” He nods enthusiastically and rubs his hand up and down her arm. Like he can’t be bothered by anything.

Obviously, he is, though. She can see through him in an instant, same as the other Doctor.

“Go on, then.” He untangles his arm from around her and nods towards the hall.

“We can talk more in the morning, yeah?” she asks as she leaps down from the chair.

“Of course.” They have time. All the time in the world. They’ll get past the initial awkwardness.

His foot on the console means his leg is blocking her path, so she stops in front of him, curling a finger in the air until he drops his foot and sits forward, all curious eyebrows. A hand on the side of his neck to pull him in closer, she presses a kiss to his cheek. It’s also a bit warmer than she’s used to, but it’s nice. Very nice.

“Night, Doctor.”

He grins with happy surprise as she walks away, and she realizes it’s the first time she’s called him by his name to his face. Just before she turns her head to look where she’s going, she sees his hand come up to touch where her lips had just been.

\---

When she closes the door of the Doctor’s room behind her, he’s still asleep on the large bed, chest rising and falling slowly, hair sticking up just as she left it. She pulls her shirt over her head, shimmies out of her trousers, and climbs in, pulling the duvet over herself and wriggling towards the center of the bed until she’s flush against him.

He stirs when her hands wrap around his arm and her nose nuzzles his ribs, a low groan sounding under her mouth as she presses her lips there. Rolling onto his side towards her, he wraps his arm around her and rubs gentle circles over her back. His chest muscles a pillow under her cheek, she closes her eyes.

Behind her eyelids is the other Doctor in his blue suit, smiling at her. He looks just as adorable as ever with his specs and his glorious hair; her name and the word ‘well’ sound exactly the same on his tongue. She wonders how he feels about all this, where he thinks the three of them are headed. About the warmer temperature of his skin and his propensity to blush, about using ‘human’ as a descriptor for him and what it could mean for the future. She didn’t want to overwhelm either of them tonight, but she hopes to get answers sooner rather than later. To unravel the mystery of his creation so her doubts and qualms about their relationship can be squashed quickly.

He’s waiting, back there in the console room, for her to be ready for him. And she promises herself (and, a little bit, the TARDIS since she can tell she’s listening right now) that she will be soon. As if on cue, the light outside her eyelids dims sharply. Cracking one eye open, she confirms the lights in the room have all gone out, and a wave of preening comes from the TARDIS.

She smiles against the Doctor’s chest, and mentally thanks her for waking her up. Difficult as it had been to abandon the warmth and security and _perfection_ of being snuggled up to her Doctor after all this time to go and find him, a weight of apprehension has been lifted from her shoulders now that they’ve really talked. That there’s a spark between them, someplace they can start. And that he doesn’t hate her for leaving him tonight.

Brushing one last kiss over the Doctor’s sternum, she daydreams of new possibilities and happy endings, and barely registers his lips touching her temple before sleep claims her again.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out. Major angst warning. Your little author here cried no less than 4 times writing it.
> 
> Also, I wanted to say this real quick. I've tried to be transparent about my intentions with this story by only putting it in the tentoo/rose tag and not in the ten/rose one. But I'll be extra clear about it right now just in case: this is eventually going to be a tentoo/rose story, not an OT3-type story. Proceed with that knowledge!
> 
> Anyway, with that caveat out of the way, thank you all for your patience with this story. I really hope you'll stick with me through what's still to come. Hugs and feedback are always appreciated. <3

The screams are deafening in the thick, empty silence that surrounds him. His lungs are burning, his vocal cords crackling and tearing in his throat, his eardrums pounding from the force of it. His lungs feel hollowed out, like there can’t be any air left in them but somehow the sound keeps coming out, and his throat aches with how much effort it takes to go on yelling her name.

But Rose doesn’t turn. There is no evidence to suggest she recognizes of the sound of his voice or that she even detects any sound at all. Neither she nor the partially unclothed figure of himself snuggled under pink sheets with her seems remotely bothered by his inexorable yelling, or even appears to notice the flailing arms of the man in the window.

Neither of them is aware that he exists at all.

This can’t be happening. He still hasn’t told her how he feels!

An overwhelming desire to profess his love effervesces inside him; the pending words of his amorous declaration tingle hotly on his tongue. But his stomach turns at the sight of the other man nestled in the place where he belongs, and his vision blurs with unshed tears until it burns to hold them back. He rubs his arm over his eyes to wipe away some of the moisture, growling with the effort to hold himself together just a little bit longer.

He has to get her attention. There must be a way. He’s only just got her back, he can’t let her go now. Especially not to that… _fluke_ lying next to her, the sad excuse for a Time Lord that doesn’t even deserve to claim his name. He doesn’t deserve her. Not while the _proper_ him, who’s been waiting for her to come back to him for years, is right here. Not while both of his hearts still beat for Rose. Not while he’d do anything for her, _be_ anything for her.

He bangs on the glass separating him from the room again with his fist, pouring all of his strength into it, bracing himself for it to shatter under his hand and rain to his feet. But it never breaks. It thunders and shakes with each pound of his fist, but it’s just noise, an angry clamor that doesn’t bring him any closer to Rose.

The other him presses his lips to Rose’s cheek, and a snarl rumbles in his chest. He kisses her neck, too, and his hands stroke down her body, pushing a blanket back to expose more and more of her skin. His fists clench up even more tightly, making his arms tremble with the intensity of it. Does she _know_ that’s not him? Or, rather, that it’s the _wrong_ him? He has to ensure she does before anything else happens between them.

If only he could reach her. He can’t even remember a time when he wasn’t trying to break through this cursed glass.

There are no doors that lead into this strange room he’s never seen before, come to think of it. It isn’t his, and it isn’t either of Rose’s – the one on the TARDIS or the one back at her mum’s flat. Its walls are a pastel yellow, the bedsheets and linens varying hues of cotton candy and bubble gum. Bright white sunlight shines through an adjacent window and everything in the room glows with the radiance of it; he can even feel it warming his skin through the glass barrier.

The doppelganger leans down for a kiss on her full lips, tender and passionate, and after all the time he’s wasted beating against the glass, he’s the one who breaks.

He turns from the torturous sight, unable to bear it any longer and completely drained of the energy to pursue another way inside.

But there’s nowhere to turn. Out of view of the window, his entire field of vision is bathed in shadow.

Swiveling around on his heel, he confirms the yellows and pinks of the room beyond are still there, that he hasn’t gone blind. Hearts in his chest, he frantically searches for a sliver of light that would reveal an exit, for even a flicker of something tangible for him to run to. But the abyss extends in every direction – up, down, left, right, and behind. He steps away from the window, convinced he must have missed something simple. But no matter how many times he spins in circles, all that exists is the taunting luminosity of the floating window on a three-dimensional canvas of black. A beacon of torment in an infinite void.

Launching into a sprint, he takes a few long strides from the window before a sharp throb behind his ribs brings him to his knees, clutching his chest to try to soothe the agony. The penetrating shadow swallows every ray of light emanating from behind him, steals the heat from his body until he shivers violently. The cold darkness sprawls out before him as much as it weighs him down, paralyzing… constricting… choking…

\---

The Doctor startles awake, sitting upright in his bed and gasping for breath. The TARDIS has sensed his distress and adjusted the lights in his room, helping him to mentally detach from the nightmare. Searching the other half of the bed, he exhales with relief, a hand over his hearts, when there’s still a sleeping human tucked in next to him. A peaceful, mostly naked, and ever-beautiful Rose Tyler.

Tuning into his perpetual clock, he ascertains he’s been asleep for three hours.

Three hours of his final moments with her, wasted.

His chest constricts painfully as reality catches up with him.

The isolation and despair that overwhelmed him in the suffocating darkness of the dream linger unpleasantly with him. They trigger memories of what a younger, more damaged version of himself experienced constantly in the aftermath of the Time War. He knows these temporary, residual emotions will wane relatively quickly, intense though they may feel immediately upon waking. But this horrific nightmare that he desperately wants to forget is, within mere hours, going to become his reality.

_If,_ that is _._

_If_ he sticks to his masochistic plan to bow out. To leave Rose, the only person he may ever want to spend the rest of his lives with, alone with the metacrisis instead of with him.

He’s little more than a confused newborn who’s probably sulking someplace on the ship this very moment. The thought of having to watch him attempt to woo her as he bids them farewell, and turning to face nothing but the dark abyss of a lonely forever, living with that nightmare for the rest of his life… it makes him feel physically ill. He doesn’t know how he’ll survive if he goes through with it. Another sacrifice. Another heartbreak. All he wants in the universe is to be with her, and he thought he was finally going to get the second chance that the universe has never been kind enough to offer him. He might not be blinded by a tangible, opaque darkness as he was in the dream, but it will consume him just the same.

If he has to face that kind of darkness again, he may drown in it this time. In his earlier regenerations, he swears he had never been this afraid of abandonment. But _this_ him was born with two sensitive, practically human hearts because he thought that was what Rose wanted. Whether or not he was ever able to give them to her completely, his subconscious couldn’t lie when the time came to encode his biology. He regenerated into someone who wanted to love and touch and connect purely for her sake.

This incarnation of himself exists for her, and in the time they spent apart, the compassion and exuberance he’d been born with had slowly drained out of him. He’d become distant and moody and volatile and he knew it, but he couldn’t snap himself out of it.

Donna might be able to pull him through it, provide a shoulder to lean on and a hand to hold and make him laugh when he needs it most. But with her time with him about to expire, too, he isn’t sure what will be left to keep him afloat. He doesn’t _want_ to live without either one of them, but he doesn’t know _how_ he can live without both. With Donna, there’s no other choice to be made save for sentencing her to death. But with Rose…

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, physically pushing back tears before they can escape, and takes a deep breath.

He has to talk to someone. He can’t make this decision alone. Donna seems like the obvious choice, since she’s the only one who knows everything. Who has, with the right combination of curiosity and persistence, been able to wring out of him the story of how he lost Rose, the lingering feelings he has for her, and his romantic dreams of finding her again.

As he lets out another harsh breath, the sheets rustle next to him and the mattress shifts around his weight. He turns to find Rose barely cracking one eye open to watch him.

“You’re up,” she mumbles. She lets out a few garbled moans and rocks forward as she stretches muscles that are out of sight beneath the duvet. His hearts swell at the sight of her, the air flows in and out of his lungs so easily, and warmth blossoms in his chest and under his cheeks.

What a sight it is, her waking up unclothed in his bed like she’d never left it, teasing him with the lusciously tempting offer to be in it every morning of their forever.

“You alrigh’?” she breathes, still squinting at him even in the dim light of the room, propping up on her elbow when he doesn’t stir.

“Yeah.” His voice is soft, disguising the lie as fatigue. “Just couldn’t go back to sleep.”

“Mmm.” She nods. “How long’ve we been out?”

He calculates how long she’s slept based on the intervals he’s been asleep and awake since she faded out.

“About six hours.”

“Oh,” she sighs, lying back completely on the bed once more.

He swallows hard.

“Not very long for you. Why don’t you go back to sleep?” he murmurs.

She stretches again with a squeaky, tired groan, kicking her feet and pushing her arms up above her head until they touch the headboard. It makes the blankets slip down from around her chest, revealing her breasts to him in all their smooth, plump glory.

A familiar, pronounced tugging feeling behind his ribs makes him hesitate. How can he leave the solace of their private refuge, now that she’s awake and it might be the only time they have left?

His mind starts to wander, to imagine all the things he would do if he stayed. He’d take her breast gently in his mouth, feel her hands comb through his hair and hear his name fall from her lips before he attends to the second with his hand. Touch every inch of her skin with his lips while she melts beneath his hands, whisper how gorgeous she is to him between soft kisses. Hold her close and tell her all the ways he loves her in his more eloquent native language. Reconnect his mind with hers as he finally returns her promise to him: a promise to stay forever. Make slow and tender love to her until neither of them can move.

Oh, he wants it so desperately. His mind sizzles with electricity at the thought of reuniting with hers, and his groin swells pleasurably at even the slight possibility of being inside of her again. And his hearts thump hot in his chest at the possibility that she stays, that he doesn’t say goodbye and they spend the next few hours… maybe even days… in this room getting reacquainted, mentally and physically. The metacrisis be damned.

But it’s that precise possibility that reminds him he does need to talk to Donna. She’ll be able to advise what he should do, even if it’s one of the last things she ever does for him. If Donna agrees Rose should stay, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to backtrack and convince himself again that she deserves better, that he isn’t allowed to keep her. But either way, he has to know.

He leans down and kisses her, a gentle press of his lips, and she returns it but doesn’t chase after his mouth when he pulls back.

“I’m going to go and find Donna,” he whispers, pulling the stack of blankets back up over her collarbone. “I told her I’d come and find her if I woke up before you did.”

He didn’t, though. It’s the second lie he’s told in the span of a few minutes, and it prickles his conscience.

“Okay,” she mumbles, still smiling gently from his kiss.

As he goes through the motions to climb out of bed, pull on his wrinkled clothes, and freshen up in the en suite, his hearts sink further and further into his gut. And as he takes one last look at her, peaceful and warm in a cocoon of blankets on his bed, he can’t help the dread that pools in the pit of his stomach that it might be the last time he’ll ever see her there. That the brief, chaste kiss he’d just given her was the last time he’d ever taste her lips.

\---

He’s shocked to find Donna sitting at the table in the kitchen, a TARDIS manual in her hands and a kettle on the stove.

“Donna?” His mouth hangs open.

“Morning.” She looks up from the book for just long enough to grin up at him, then returns her attention to the text.

“You’re awake?” He thought he’d have to wait a little while before she shuffled into the kitchen looking for tea.

“Yeah! Have been for a couple hours! Isn’t it brilliant? I feel more awake than I have in years! Four hours of sleep!”

Undoubtedly a product of the Time Lord consciousness that’s eclipsing her mind.

The same one that will inevitably start to burn her alive, probably sooner rather than later.

“You’re reading the TARDIS manual?” he asks, not letting his train of thought show on his face.

“Yeah. You gave it to me. Well, the other you.” She nods her head in the direction of the console room, the direction from which he can still feel a weak telepathic energy. “Figured I could give it a go, now that I’m clever. It’s easy as can be. I’ll be the one flying the TARDIS one day soon, skinny boy, you just wait.”

“Hmm.” He smiles for her, and it’s so difficult to contort his muscles that way, to avoid it becoming a frown. It just feels so out of place on his face, like the ultimate in deception and betrayal. But how could he possibly tell her? He doesn’t even know when it’ll happen. And it’ll only make her miserable in the time being if he does. Why shouldn’t she be happy while it lasts? If he’s learned anything being a time traveler, it’s that it does far more harm than good to enlighten someone of their fate prematurely.

She doesn’t notice how weak his counterfeit smile is, and goes on reading (and simultaneously talking about everything she’s learned about time travel mechanics in the last hour).

He pulls out the chair nearest to her and slumps into it.

“Donna.” He places a hand over the binding of the manual, and she looks up at him, finally seeing something in his eyes she missed before. Concern colors her features as she concludes her physics lesson and closes the book.

“I need your help,” he admits.

“What is it, Doctor?” She sets the book on the table, forehead creasing with worry.

She knows how much he loathes this, talking. Even insinuating his feelings out loud. Anything verbal that might make him temporarily vulnerable from the perspective of the listener. But on the rare occasions when he’d asked for her guidance or decided it was time to open up about something, she had listened with a care and focus he didn’t know she was capable of. Since she came aboard, there hasn’t been a time when she wasn’t there for him if he asked. And he adores her for that.

“It’s… Rose.” He looks away from her gaze and studies the patterns of wood on the table, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You mean because of… him?” she ventures.

He takes a slow, deep breath before he nods reluctantly.

“Do you want to stay with her?”

“Yes.” He’s almost angry when he says it, because being questioned about his feelings for Rose always makes him a bit defensive. But this is Donna, and this is just her way of getting him to talk, and he knows that.

“Then what’s there to be confused about?”

He doesn’t answer, but thoughts of the metacrisis flood through his mind, and she must see the way the fury etches itself into his features, the way it sets his jaw hard and makes his eyebrows sink low over darkening eyes. She’s seen it too many times already. He takes another deep breath, and when he exhales it’s basically a growl. He’s a dead giveaway when he’s upset, and it annoys him.

“You think he’s better for her.”

Bang on.

Donna’s almost too intuitive, sometimes. Reminds him of Rose in that way.

“Isn’t he?”

“He’s the same as you, though, right? How could he be any better?”

“He’s basically a human, Donna. He’s not going to live another few thousand years. He’s got a human lifespan.”

“Oh.” She pauses to think for a few moments, and the kettle whistling in the background is piercing in the silence.

“Well, just because he happened to be born with some human in him doesn’t mean he deserves to be with her any more than you do.”

“So, what, let her choose between us?” He doesn’t hide the disgust in his tone.

“No, not that,” she scoffs, shaking her head. “I know I haven’t known Rose very long at all. But from all the things you’d told me about her, I don’t think she’d want to leave either of you.”

She’s right, of course. He’d thought the exact same thing to himself last night. But that doesn’t mean the solution to his quandary is so simple.

“How could that possibly work?” He leans his elbows on the table and pushes his hands through his hair, scratching his scalp and tugging hard enough that it hurts a little. “He’s gonna…” His voice cracks, and he swallows hard, catching his breath. “He’s going to _age_ with her. If I stay with them, or they stay with me, eventually she’s gonna look at me, five or ten or twenty years from now…”

And see he hasn’t aged a day. And that he still doesn’t understand what it’s like to be human. Because he’s _not_. And the metacrisis is, more or less. But he bites his tongue, not wanting to reveal too much.

“And what, realize she doesn’t want you anymore?”

He glowers at her, but doesn’t reply.

“I don’t think that’ll happen,” she answers her own question. “Rose isn’t that selfish.”

It could, though, and the possibility alone is frightening enough. But even if she doesn’t want to leave, what if she realizes that the other one understands? He’ll sleep every night and come down with colds and get randy and start to develop random aches and pains with age. She might decide she and the metacrisis are more compatible than they ever were. And what then? How much deeper will it cut him with each year their separation is postponed?

“Maybe biologically, he is better for her. But who cares about that, Doctor? She loves you. You know she does. And you love her, too, don’t you?”

_He is better for her._

Those five words are all he hears.

He drags his hands down his face, concealing his emotions from her. She’s trying to cushion the blow, to encourage him even though she agrees with what he’s saying. Why else wouldn’t she simply and plainly tell him that he’s being an idiot for even considering it? That’s what she’d normally do if she disagreed with him.

“Even if she doesn’t think that,” he changes course, ignoring her question. “Eventually she’ll leave me.”

“She won’t leave.” She shakes her head.

“They’ll die.” His voice is quiet, but he slams his fist down on the table, rattling her empty mug with the force of it. His eyes are glassy; there’s no hiding it from her.

“Tell me, Doctor.” She puts her hand over his, lacing her fingers between his awkwardly to loosen his fist. “If the –” Her words catch in her throat, and she starts over. “If the other Doctor had never been created, would you still be worried about this? Would you still want to leave her?”

Donna tries hard not to let it show, but there’s sadness in her eyes.

A frown tugs at the corners of his mouth.

“Do you know what it’s like, Donna? To watch someone you….” He chokes on the word, and falls silent for a few moments to keep himself in check.

“I couldn’t leave her.” He shakes his head slowly.

“Then why now?” she pleads. As long as he’s not doing anything pompous or destructive, she’s always been an advocate for whatever makes him happy.

“Now she could be happy without me.” His voice sounds lifeless and defeated even to himself.

“But what about you?”

He seals his lips closed again, and she guesses quickly that he’s not going to respond to that.

“I’ve talked to him, he’s… very much in love with her. And he’s not afraid to admit it.” There’s an insinuation in there somewhere that _he is_ afraid to admit it but shouldn’t be.

Yeah, yeah. Mister human with his one heart on his sleeve.

“I can’t imagine what you must be going through, Doctor. I dunno what I’d do in your situation. I want you to be happy, is all. And I know how much Rose means to you. But I do think that if they do go off on their own, they’d be happy together. And you and me, we’d be happy, too. Cause I’m not going anywhere.”

_They’d be happy together._

He knows she’s only thinking out loud, and probably doesn’t realizing she’s cementing his resolve to walk away. But it still hurts, more than he would have thought possible, to hear from your best mate that they genuinely think the person you love would be happy with someone else. Anyone else. Worst of all a mostly inferior copy of yourself.

Donna’s still talking, but he’s having more and more trouble processing her words. Something about love and decisions and support.

He’s still focused on repeating two phrases she’d used over and over in his head, and with every echo they become less like objective advice and more like a lamentation. A dirge. _He is better for her. They’d be happy together._

He supposes he sat down with her hoping that she would affirm his selfish implication that the metacrisis isn’t really good for her. That he doesn’t deserve Rose, and the one sitting here with her is the only one who does.

He should’ve known better.

Without a TARDIS or the crushing burdens requisite to the last of the Time Lords on his shoulders, the metacrisis can focus on her. Love her with all of his single sodding heart.

He’s never going to be able to do that, to give her his all. No matter how desperately he wants to, there will always be fragments of himself missing, shards shattered beyond repair that he can no longer offer. He’ll never have done enough good to wash away the sins of his past, and he’ll always carry the weight of the deaths he’s seen, the ones he’s caused. He’ll always be searching for penance, for a way to right the wrongs of a thousand years. He’ll never stop living in terror of the day that she, too, will be taken from him, and it’ll always hold him back when she pulls forward. He wants to give her all of himself, but those pieces of him, those sharp edges of guilt and mortality, they aren’t safe for her hands to hold.

And she deserves better. If he stays behind to bear their burden, both his and the metacrisis’, as he always has, Rose can have the Doctor she deserves. The one that (though she’d deny it if he asked) she really wants: the one that _can_ give her all of himself.

Oh, he doesn’t want it to be true. The desolate aching feeling inside him from when he lost her the first time returns with a vengeance. The room feels like it’s shrinking from around him, compressing the air tighter and mounting pressure on his chest until he’s struggling to breathe. It feels like any moment it will cave in and collapse his lungs. He almost wants it to happen, just so he can surrender to death and reject his body’s attempt at regeneration and never have to endure this heartbreak at all.

And to think, only the night before he thought he was finally getting a second chance at happiness. But of course, the universe doesn’t owe him that, and it certainly doesn’t owe him a lifetime (even if it’s short and human) with someone he loves. He should’ve learned that by now. But he’s too gullible and sentimental and in love with Rose to ever think clearly in matters where she’s concerned

“Doctor, are you all right?” There’s panic in Donna’s voice, and he realizes he hasn’t been listening to a word she’s said for eighty-three seconds.

“Yeah.” His voice cracks again, and the legs of his chair screech as he scrambles out of it.

“Thanks, Donna. I’ve just got to go, uhm… prepare the TARDIS to take everyone else home.”

His shoes skid on the floor in his rush to leave the kitchen, and he almost slams into someone else walking in.

Speak of the devil.

Stumbling a few steps back, he glares at the blue suit with rust-colored pinstripes, the red Chucks stolen from the wardrobe, and the glasses stolen from the console, and for a moment he wants to kill him. To throw a good punch in his face that knocks him unconscious and then just open the TARDIS doors and toss him out. He can’t take Rose if he’s dead.

He glances in his eyes just for a fraction of a second, wide and anxious and the same mahogany brown he sees every morning. Only it’s nothing like looking in the mirror. The raw fury and anguish he can feel rippling off his body is absent in this other man; the metacrisis is just telepathic enough that he can sense his most prominent emotions: his hope and passion and curiosity. No, it’s not like the image in the mirror, it’s like a glimpse into the past, a vision of himself when he first regenerated. When he had a whole life with Rose ahead of him.

And he reminds himself: that’s the one who Rose should be with. Not the one who’s contemplating murder just to keep her for himself, and suicide if he can’t.

“Doctor, wait –” Donna calls to him, standing up from her chair.

“I’m fine. Don’t follow me,” he commands with a glance in her direction.

Brushing past the blue suit of too-human body heat without daring to look in his eyes again, he flees the kitchen.

“What was all that about?” the metacrisis whispers in his wake.

The bastard doesn’t even remember how good his hearing used to be before he became a metacrisis.

He clamps his hands over his ears, because can’t bear to think what they might be about to chat about, after everything he’s just confessed to her.

Donna wouldn’t betray his confidence that way, would she?

Then again, technically the metacrisis is another version of himself. She might not see it as a betrayal.

His trainers rattle the grating beneath him as he races down the winding corridor towards the lab, the nearest place he can think of that’s guaranteed to be empty.

\---

Once he’s alone, the door shut and locked behind him and a plea sent to the TARDIS to hide him from everyone else, his perpetual ‘I’m okay’ façade finally cracks. He shoves a full table with more force than he’d planned and it slides and topples to the floor with a thundering crash of shattering glass and rolling bolts and screws. The debris scatters in every direction, and it feels good to watch the shards of everything collect at his feet. A tangible catharsis to manifest the tempest swirling inside of him, leaving its own trail of destruction in his patchwork hearts.

He has to clench his fists against his thighs to keep from lashing out again, breaking anything else valuable or making more of a mess.

“Why!?” he shouts at the ceiling, demanding the attention of his ship. Staggers a few steps backward to sag against the wall. And then, incrementally calmer, “Why do they _all_ have to leave, girl?”

The TARDIS doesn’t respond with words, but a soothing, warm presence envelops his body and infiltrates the edges of his mind. He relaxes his mental barriers to welcome the morsel of comfort she’s offering, the telepathic company she brings him when no one else can.

“I don’t want to be alone,” he confesses softly.

The TARDIS reassures him that she’ll always be there, a tender embrace of companionship overwhelming their connection. Reminds him that there’s always something worth living for. That Rose would want him to find it, and that she does, too. Others will come. New friends will help to fill the void Rose and Donna will carve into his soul, will make him whole again.

“I don’t want them,” he insists, shaking his head. “I don’t want anyone else.”

She knows, she tells him. She knows he only wants them. Rose and Donna with him and as invincible and immortal as he is. But since the metacrisis burst into existence, that timeline has been closed off.

“Will they be happy?” he asks.

She hesitates, and a few beats of silence pass between them before she digs deeper into his mind to make sure he wants to see this.

He gives her his consent instantly.

Tapping into his temporal senses, she fuses the live wires of their prescience together. The synergy of their combined faculties allows him to glimpse into the future with ease and precision he couldn’t achieve on his own.

The first sensations are of Donna. The obnoxious resonance of her laughter. The bustle of a restaurant where she’s chatting with friends over food and wine. The warmth and love suffused in the way she links arms with her grandfather under a starry night sky. The confidence in her step as she walks into work each morning, because her subconscious remembers what she’s capable of. The caring promise in the way she clasps her fiancée’s hand in hers on her second wedding day. The sheer joy following the announcement of lottery numbers when she realizes she holds the winning ticket. She doesn’t remember a thing about the box she used travel the galaxies in, or the fact that that the universe is safe by her hand, or how much she helped a lonely man remember what it’s like to laugh and to trust. But he can feel it permeating his mind, despite how he rebels against the idea that it could be true after what he has to do, after it leaves him broken with loneliness and guilt. She’s happy.

The next pulses of life are of him and Rose. At a table for two in their pyjamas, hair thoroughly messed from sleep, they mumble plans for the day through large bites of waffle and then laugh at the their lack of manners. In a city he doesn’t recognize, backpacks and hats on, they stop their brisk walk along the sidewalk to take a photo together in front of a towering stone fountain, their cheeks pressed together and huge smiles on their faces. Love and excitement gush through him as he stands tall in a well-tailored black suit, Rose in a flowing white dress next to him, radiant as she grins up and him. He takes her now-ring-bearing hand as they wait impatiently for the officiator to say the word, until he can finally take her face in his hands and kiss her.

He brings a hand to his lips when he feels it, the devotion and happiness in their first kiss as husband and wife.

He severs the prophetic link with the TARDIS, and slumps completely to the floor as the tears that have been steadily welling up in his eyes finally spill over. Because it’s not really him he’s seeing with Rose; he’s not going to be her Doctor anymore. For just a few moments he lets the droplets fall, because he wants that future so bad. He’d give anything to be the man in those brilliant, evanescent visions. He wants to give it all up, everything that comes with being a Time Lord and everything that makes him not right for her, and never leave her side again. He wishes this other Doctor had never been created and mucked up his miraculous second chance to be with her.

But then, if he hadn’t been, none of them would be alive to begin with.

Wiping his face on his jacket sleeve, he takes a deep breath and rests his head back against the wall. Tries to collect himself enough to leave the safety of seclusion.

Donna will be happy.

Rose will be happy.

He never deserved happiness, anyway. And if they’re all right in the end, he can suffer through the rest of his lifetimes with that knowledge to keep him strong, to keep him on his feet when it feels like every power in the universe is trying to knock him down. He’ll do this for them, because they deserve happiness even if he can’t have it.

_If you live long enough,_ he’d once told Lazarus. _The only certainty left is that you’ll end up alone._

Somewhere along his journey, he’d forgotten that old axiom. At one point in his life, he was used to ending up alone. It might even be better for him, in the end. He only wishes he didn’t have to endure that lonely fate in this particular body, because the cosmos knows it wasn’t designed to withstand long periods solitude. He was born in love, the only thought in his mind to become a man Rose would love in return, and it made him more human than he’s ever been. His craving for intimacy and affection was a gift while she was there to constantly satisfy it, but now that she’s going to make her second and final departure from his life, it will be nothing but a curse.

With the wall as a crutch, he lifts himself off the floor. Uses some broken glass as a mirror to wipe away any remnants of moisture from his cheeks and ensure no evidence of his lapse in self-control is visible to the others. He takes a deep breath, sends a wave of gratitude and affection to the TARDIS, and grips the handle of the door too tightly.

He’s used to sacrificing what he wants for the good of others, sometimes the good of the universe. He’s even martyred himself, once or twice. But knowing what he’s about to face when he walks out this door, he’s scared that he won’t be able to do it this time. That after everything he’s has been through in this body, this is what will finally defeat him. The one time he won’t be able walk away the hero.

Pushing down his terror and every other emotion that might betray him, he reconstructs the façade of transcendent indifference he’ll need to survive this. Because he never, ever imagined he’d voluntarily give up Rose Tyler a second time.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for taking 2 months to get this update out... on the plus side, I HAVE now outlined 25 chapters of this fic! So I’ve made some progress with its future, even if I haven’t posted very recently... anyway. This one was really hard for me to get out there, I suppose, because I don’t really feel ready to let go yet. This entire fic is about closure for me, and it’s been hard to push myself to face those demons when I spend most of my time avoiding them. Anyway, that pathetic-ness out of the way... hope this ch. is worth the wait!
> 
> CONTENT NOTICE (optional) - for people wondering where I'm going with this... I was thinking about this the other day when I was outlining some (much) later chapters. In the notes of chapter 4 I made it explicitly clear this will be a Tentoo/Rose endgame story. That Ten's time in this story is limited. That's still true of course. But I was also thinking about some reasons I am often afraid to start multi-chapter Tentoo-centered fics, with the future unknown and there being so many common elements of Tentoo/Rose fic that makes me incredibly sad/angry. So I want to make it clear that, although this is definitely an angsty fic and the pain isn't really going to let up anytime soon, there are a few elements I can PROMISE you won't find in this fic (none of these are spoilery, not really, just things that I personally cannot stand when people do that I want to assure you will not happen, but you can feel free to ignore them if you still don't want to know). So, things I will not be including in this Tentoo and Rose journey:
> 
> 1) Tentoo is not going to die. (Nor is Rose, but that's much less common in fic.)  
> 2) I'm not going to split them up, even temporarily.  
> 3) They are not going to cheat on each other at any time, or even consider it.  
> 4) I'm going to rip your heart out along the way, but the ending will be happy.
> 
> I say these things for the comfort and safety of everyone in the d/r fandom interested in this fic. Because I've really set the stage for a misery fest with these first few chapter. I don't want anyone to live in fear of the next update! Also, I won't be giving away any major plot-related spoilers (against my belief system), but if you've got any other fears about this story or want to know if I'll be doing something else awful I didn't think of, I may be able to ease your worries if you send me a private message on tumblr. (I'm also going to go back and attach this to the note on chapter 1, for fairness.)

Everyone on board is awake, he discovers as he slogs back through the bleak halls towards the control room. Rose and Martha fondly wish one another well over toast in the kitchen. In the media room, his duplicate and Sarah Jane promise one another bright futures and dance around saying an actual farewell. Jack kisses Jackie on the hand as they walk through the garden, with a flirtatious comment that leaves her flustered and pink in the cheeks. Mickey and Donna lean against a coral of the ship, exchanging stories of their travels in the TARDIS.

Unexpected pairings, the lot of them, but he can’t bring himself to be even ephemerally pleased they’re all getting along. The hope and laughter in their conversations jars him. He may as well be in chains, guards shoving him between the shoulder blades as he drags his feet to the gallows, but none of them even appear aware of the imminent execution, as it were. They’ve got lives ahead of them, filled with people they love that love them in return, and are either oblivious or unconcerned that he will face a much different reality once they’ve all gone their separate ways.

It doesn’t take him long to get the TARDIS flight-ready. _Someone_ seems to have worked on tuning her up sometime in the night. His upper lip trembles as he breathes out a low snarl at the thought.

He wants to ask someone to stay. Anyone. Just for a little while, so he doesn’t have to face the emptiness Rose and Donna will leave in the caverns of the TARDIS alone. Someone to hold his hand on his next few travels, someone to sip tea with in the mornings and binge inaccurate science fiction shows with at night. Someone to keep him from regressing back into the lonely and volatile prisoner of PTSD he was before he met Rose. And after he lost her.

But as he leads each of them out of the doors, one by one, he remembers all the reasons he can’t. Sarah had turned down his offer of travel after the Krillitanes and K9, and he knows better than to ask twice. Jack’s got Torchwood and Ianto (who it sounds like Jack might just be ready to renounce his eternal bachelordom for). Martha has a job waiting for her at UNIT, and if he’s honest with himself, it’d be cruel to ask her to stay again after the strength it took for her to leave the first time. Mickey wants to break from the mold, to define himself as something other than Rose’s ex or the Doctor’s idiot, and he can’t blame him for that.

_You act like such a lonely man_ , Sarah had said. _But look at you, you’ve got the biggest family on Earth._

She had meant well, and he understood the point she was trying to make, but she didn’t know what the rest of his day was going to look like. He’s got family, sure. In a loose interpretation of the word. They’ll come together if the universe needs saving, they’ll call for him if they can’t handle a threat to the Earth on their own. But how many members of this ‘big family’ are ever really there for him, when _he_ needs _their_ help?

Precisely the ones he’s about to let go forever.

Before he can begin to come to terms with so many goodbyes at once, they’ve all walked away from his little blue box without looking back. As their timelines sprawl brightly ahead of them, he’s left facing a half-empty control room occupied only by Donna, Jackie, Rose, and the bloody metacrisis.

“There’s time for one last trip,” he breathes out, touching Jackie on the shoulder on his way to the controls.

“Darlig Ulv Stranden.” He glances over at the man in blue, offering his first and only warning of what he’s about to do. Considering he’s about to be handed everything he’s ever dreamed of, he hardly deserves more notice than that. Although he’s too telepathically inept to feel the caveat radiating from his mind, in the brief moment of eye contact he allows, it seems like those wide, nervous eyes are able to divine his intentions quite clearly.

Yes, he knows.

The moment Jackie steps out of the TARDIS doors, the metacrisis follows her onto the beach, eager as can be to take what he’s being offered. Good thing for him, too. If he weren’t appreciative of this chance, he would toss him into the sand on his arse and make him watch as the TARDIS faded away with Rose still inside.

He and Jackie are talking about something on their way across the beach, something he’s not listening to. His eyes are fixed on Rose, watching her slow, hesitant steps through the sand and the uncertainty in her eyes as she takes in their surroundings. Uncertainty that quickly escalates to fear.

“Hold on, this is… the parallel universe, right?” She looks him right in the eyes and challenges his decision to disembark here at all.

“You’re back home.” His stony, apathetic exterior is firmly in place, his true emotions under lock and key beneath the façade.

“And this world is sealing itself off,” Donna chimes in next to him. “Now that the reality bomb never happened. It’s dimensional retroclosure. See? I really get that stuff now.”

He nods halfheartedly in agreement.

 “No, but… I spent all that time trying to find you, I’m not going back now!”

He hadn’t prepared himself for this, for what exactly she’d say to try to convince him not to leave. Rose is as passionate as unpredictable when it comes to displaying of emotion; trying to predict her words in advance is next to impossible. But one thing he’d definitely not prepared himself for was that her lips would say one thing, but her eyes say another entirely. Golden brown and pink around the edges and boring into his, they remind him that they’d spent the night mentally and physically entwined. He hasn’t forgotten it. But he feels even more selfish than ever for allowing it to happen, when he _knew_ it would hurt her if (or when, more accurately) it came to this.

“But you’ve got to.” It’s all he can manage while still keeping his mask plastered on his face. “Cause we saved the universe, but at a cost.” He glances up at his Other, knowing he’ll go along with whatever he says, considering what’s at stake. “And the cost is him.” Bitterness darkens his tone.

The words pour out of his mouth easily, having rehearsed them at the door to the laboratory a dozen times. Accusations that the metacrisis is unstable and unfit for their home universe because he committed genocide on the Daleks. But all of it is utter rubbish. He’d have done the same thing himself, had no one else been there to do it. Whether he wants to admit it to anyone or not, he can’t lie to himself. At the time, though, it was easy to lay blame on the metacrisis for causing more death, because _finally_ , for once in his life, the blood wasn’t on his hands. And it felt good.

Though he’ll defend his lie tooth and nail where Rose is concerned, one of them isn’t really more ‘dangerous’ than the other. If anything, this part-human Doctor may be inherently less destructive and more sentimental _because_ of the humanity woven into his biology now. But he needs a cover to persuade Rose to make the right choice here, and it’s the most eloquent rationale he could come up with under the pressure of time.

For poetic effect, he implies the metacrisis is similar to his previous incarnation, the one fresh off a different genocide, and the parallel isn’t lost on Rose. The first few tears finally spill from her eyes.

He never expected to get through this unscathed by the torture of seeing her cry, but oh, stars above, he forgot how excruciating it is. His hands tingle and fingers twitch with the desperate need to wipe them away, to hold her in his arms and whisper comforting words to her as he would do in any, _any_ other circumstance. To watch the tears fall and make no attempt to console her whatsoever unsettles something deep inside him. He feels like he’s watching the scene unfold from outside his body, that it’s not him but a cruel impostor hurting her this way. Tearing down the shaky new bridge of trust they’d rebuilt the night before. Desecrating everything she means to him and every time she’s ever been there for him in a horrific act of sacrilege.

“You made me better. And you can do the same for him.” He nods to the man behind her.

“But he’s not you,” she insists.

She’s doing it again, screaming at him in her mind as her gaze burns into his, reminding him of what she said last night. That she wasn’t ready for the newer Doctor, that she missed _him_ and at least for now, only wanted to be close to _him_. He wants to give into that sentiment so desperately. To agree that the metacrisis isn’t quite the same and stop the entire charade right now, pull her into his arms and never let him take her from him. The memories of the night before burst through his mental walls, their physical and emotional intimacy so magnificent and overwhelming he knows even his superior memory can’t do it justice. Knowing that he is relinquishing the privilege to ever feel her that way again to this other man is almost unbearable.

“He needs you,” he grits out, swallowing the thickness in his throat and choking back the tears threatening to well up and betray his cause. “That’s very me.”

Her expression doesn’t change. She’s still waiting for him to switch gears and change his mind, to say he doesn’t want her to leave, and the hole in his chest tears a little wider with each passing moment. And he almost calls it all off.

Almost. A few seconds longer, and he would have.

But just as he’s about to forget the whole thing, recant everything he’s said and tell her he needs her, too, Donna chimes in.

“But it’s better than that, though!”

Now that she knows for sure the path he’s chosen, she’s coming to his aid. He supposes he can’t be anything but grateful that she’s trying to help him do what she thinks he wants now, especially after how roughly their earlier conversation ended.

“Don’t you see what he’s trying to give you?” she continues. “Tell her, go on,” she addresses his counterpart, and Rose dutifully swivels around to hear him out.

And he says his piece. Sells himself. The gist of it is: same man, one heart, one life. It’s probably the progression he would’ve gone with, if he were lucky enough to get such a chance. It’s more difficult than he’d anticipated to listen to it without interrupting, without cutting him off to dispute his points and sell himself instead. Beg her to choose him instead.

“I could spend it with you, if you want,” he finishes with a shrug.

“You’ll grow old at the same time as me?” Rose asks, her voice wobbly and thin in the harsh wind.

“Together.”

Rose reaches out a tentative hand and places it over the first button of his blue jacket. The blue-suited Doctor meets her eyes, and right now he’d give anything – _everything_ to be the man with only one heart, the one she’s gazing at as she feels that single heart beat beneath her fingers. From the look in his eyes, the anxious desperation for approval written across his face, he must know what’s at stake. He hopes to the cosmos he realizes how lucky he is, and that he never forgets it for a second.

The TARDIS wheezes, low and raspy, from behind them. Their time to make it through the gap is running out. It’s too painfully familiar to the last time he looked out at this godforsaken beach; he had mere minutes to say goodbye to her then, too. And all those years ago, too, he was unable to do it properly. Couldn’t get the right words out.

“We’ve got to go.” He presses his lips together so he doesn’t invite them all aboard. “This reality is sealing itself off, forever.”

He turns away from Rose and towards the TARDIS, because he can’t bear to see the droplets stream down her face any longer.

“But it’s still not right,” she calls behind him, her footfalls stirring up the damp sand behind him, forcing him to turn back to her. “Cause the Doctor’s… still you.”

She’s not sold yet. Doesn’t believe them to be perfect equals, and he can’t blame her. He’s less than a day old, for heaven’s sake.

But she just doesn’t see it yet. She will, in time.

“And I’m him,” he counters, invalidating her concern.

“All right.” She gathers new confidence. “Both of you, answer me this.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and steels himself to hold his tongue no matter what she asks, as the one in blue takes several purposeful steps forward, standing as close to Rose as he is.

She angles her body to stand symmetrically between them, and glances back and forth between them as she formulates her question. He glares at the reflection of himself across Rose, and it’s evident they both know what she’s about to ask. With little more than a shift of his eyebrows, he silently orders the other man to say what they’re both thinking, to not cock it up for himself. His only response is a dark flicker of a warning in his eyes to button it, to not cock it up for him, either.

“When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me?” She’s only looking at him now, choosing him first as she has over and over since she got back. Waiting for him.

“Go on, say it,” she pushes him.

Those final moments with her on this same beach replay crystal clear in his head, as she tried to rein in her sobs with harsh breaths that cut through even the salty wind whipping her hair across her face. When the last thing she said to him wasn’t a plea to destroy the universes or a lament that she would never see him again, but that she loved him. Even though he’d already known for quite some time, he’d never projected himself there expecting to hear it. It was implicit between them, but to her, it was important to forego the usual ambiguity and make it _ex_ plicit before she lost him. If it was meaningful to her, it should be meaningful to him. And he had been ready to tell her, too, the confession had been heavy on his hearts, poised on the tip of his tongue.

He shuffles his feet and clenches his fists in his pockets, turning over different possible answers in his mind that all center around finishing that sentence he started all those years ago and then probably kissing her for a long time.

Drudging up the reasons he’s doing this ( _for her to be happy, for her to be happy, for her to be happy_ , he repeats to himself), he swallows the words swirling persistently through his mind and chokes out the simple, cruel truth with a stiff upper lip.

“I said ‘Rose Tyler’.”

“Yeah, and how was that sentence gonna end?”

_I’ll always love you._

It’s what he’d been about to say, before the projection of the sand and waves and Rose faded from view. His objective was to leave her with no question that not only did he reciprocate her feelings, but that no matter where he went, how long he lived, or who else he met along the way, he always will. His jaw aches from biting back the truth so tenaciously.

He doesn’t know what she’s trying to do. What could her endgame possibly be, if she could make him say what she wants to hear? Will it really help her if he does?

_I’ll always love you._

He doesn’t think it will help. In fact, it’ll only make it harder for her to choose if they both go confessing intimate feelings for her. One of them needs to finally put an end to the silence between them and give her closure on that first goodbye. To be the man he should’ve been for her a long time ago. He’s got to give the other one his chance to be that man, without adding his emotions to the mix and confusing everyone.

The words that come up are horribly bitter on his tongue, tingle on his lips like the most profane of curses. They contradict the the words he’s screaming in his head, like a translation circuit gone wrong.

_I’ll always love you._

“Does it need saying?”

He dreamed of this moment a thousand times while she was gone, of getting his second chance to tell her how he feels, dreamed of a thousand unique ways to tell and show her he loves her. Never once did he say anything remotely as cold and flippant as that sentence. The disappointment and betrayal carved into her features at his words is something he will never be able to erase from his memory.

_How could you?_ She accuses silently. If he were touching her skin, he knows she’d be screaming it in her mind.

Her hair blows wildly in the wind as she turns to face the other man.

“And you, Doctor? What was the end of that sentence?”

The sound of his name directed to the other man tickles the hairs on the back of his neck, sends hot chills of anger down his spine. And it feels like a new divide in time – a chasm separating two now distinct eras: the one where he was Rose’s Doctor, and the one where he’s relinquished that privilege to the part-human incarnation of himself.

What will he say? The truth – what he was really planning to say that day all those years ago, still vividly locked in his memories? Will his human side be able to think of something even more meaningful that he hadn’t considered before? Will he turn his entire plan on its head and tell her they both love her?

He touches his hand to Rose’s arm, a gesture of protection and reassurance he wishes he could offer right now. Looks briefly in her eyes, and there’s a promise in that look that he isn’t about to let her down like the idiot in brown just has. Leans in close to her ear.

Okay. It’ll be a private declaration. That’s fine. That’s better, even. He won’t have to hear it and live with its echo in his ears for the rest of his life. He intended there to be no audience except for Rose, the first time around. This is probably the way it was always meant to be.

Though he tries to make out what he says anyway, the cacophony of waves and wind swirling around them makes that impossible, even with his superior hearing. From the way his lips move, though, and the number of seconds his mouth hovers next to her ear, he guesses it’s exactly what he’s thinking.

The lucky bastard. He is so, so unbelievably lucky to be the one whispering in her ear, rather than the one spurning her request for the truth with cryptic rhetorical questions spat back in her face.

A few possibilities flit through his mind in the short span of time he watches Rose react to those words, because she looks surprised but he can’t tell if it’s the pleasant or bitter kind of surprise. She could turn back to him and ask him why he’s such a cruel and cowardly wretch who can’t do the same. Perhaps she’ll rebuff the part-human’s affections completely and still ask to come back to the TARDIS, whether or not he ever makes public how he feels. Or maybe she’ll call them both on their puppeteering and demand they discuss the future properly without countdowns and ultimatums.

But Rose surprises him, as she’s known to do. She clutches the blue suit by the lapels and pulls him down for a kiss. The way she presses his mouth against his leaves no room for doubt, it’s the kind of hard and unyielding kiss that seals the deal, that says more than words ever could. That consumes the senses and binds two aching hearts together.

Numb to the pain that should be overwhelming him, he realizes this one moment that both of them are preoccupied is his only chance to escape without further interrogation about the authenticity of his motivations. He takes a last, long look at her, at her hair flying around her face in the breeze, the delicate flutter of her eyes as they drift closed, the precise hue of her light skin and pink cheeks chapped by the wind. The curve of her lips as they meet his. Revisiting memories of their last night together, he remembers how perfect it is to touch her lips, the way she pours all of herself into her kisses when they’re together. He tries to color his final vision of her with hope, tries to remember that she’s going to be happy with him and that’s all that matters. But the lump in his throat makes it difficult even to breathe.

Donna had lingered behind, giving the three of them privacy in the pivotal moment, but she guesses the finality of the decision in his brisk pace and glistening eyes and follows him across the sand without hesitation.

The sand that he can’t feel beneath his feet. The earth has been pulled out from beneath him, and he’s just floating through thin air, fighting to hold his head upright when he can’t tell which direction is up. Everything around him dims and darkens around him, the dream coming back to haunt him. The pervading darkness of the nightmare oozes from the inside out, until the sun is nothing but a black hole in the sky and the TARDIS a haunted shadow of itself, threatening to swallow him completely once he steps inside.

Even knowing this moment would come, that the darkness would be waiting for him once he turned around just as it was in the dream, he doesn’t feel prepared to face it. All the bravery he’d once had seems to have been tied to Rose, the threads of hope that one day he’d find her again. And now that the door to that possibility is closing permanently by his own hand, there’s no courageous bone left in this fragile body. He doesn’t even turn around, this time, doesn’t dare to look back through that window of light he’s forbidden to enter.

It cuts deeper even than in the nightmare, walking away from the real thing. There’s no ethereal, confusing quality to it now. The salty air is cold fire in his lungs, his feet wobble in his trainers, the wind whips around his ears. There’s no reprieve from the agony, the deep, visceral throb of the hole in his chest gashes through vital organs as tangibly as a solid knife would. No one to wake him and close and soothe the wound.

Donna pilots the TARDIS back through the gap between universes, rattling on about some place they’re going to go that she shouldn’t know about that he’s only half-listening to. He leans back against a coral to keep himself upright, and everything about the console looks darkened, Donna herself walks around in shades of gray where she’s normally vivid red and yellow. The moment is coming, he can feel it. The moment Donna’s mind will start to buckle under the pressure of containing a Time Lord consciousness.

His survival instincts rumble to life, because he’s made it through unspeakable trauma and death and changing companionship countless times and his TNA isn’t about to let him give up now. Until he hears Donna’s speaking patterns start to malfunction, and the dread in the pit of his stomach rises like bile in this throat.

“Binary-binary-binary-binary…”

He didn’t think it would happen this soon after Rose. But he isn’t about to let his selfish desire to hold onto her bring her to death’s door without trying to save her. Clinging to the flickers of her happiness in her timeline like a life raft, he drags his feet to where she’s standing so he can do what needs to be done.

\---

As he strips off his soaking jacket and buckles in for a long night, he questions whether he did the right thing today. If there were any other possible timelines he could’ve taken that didn’t end with him drenched and miserable and alone as he stares at the time rotor.

It’s not quite a light inside of him, but a faint glow that offers him a tiny morsel of solace. Not an alternate timeline, but those few fleeting visions he has of Donna finding happiness without him. Knowing she’ll never be sad that she lost him, even if it means she can never remember. Overtaking that, the collection of images of the he and Rose happy together plays back in slow motion in his mind.

Closing his eyes, he slumps onto the jumpseat and tunes out the pounding in his head and the echo of the engine, all the burdens weighing him down and pretends the videos in his mind are of a future he and Rose got together. The TARDIS helps him sustain the fantasy, filling details into the gaps in his premonitions, easing him into a twilight state of consciousness. He lets the suggestion overtake him, that the man in the visions is him, and his mouth curves up in a smile. Inebriated with the emotional analgesic, he chases pathetically after the fleeting images even once they’ve run their course, replaying scenes over and over. Because no matter what he’s done or where he is or how long they’ve been apart, it’s impossible not to mirror a smile from Rose Tyler, even if it’s only a figment of his imagination. And as his cheeks grow wet and the taste of salt seeps through his lips, he thinks just for a little while, he can let himself smile without the universe imploding.

 Buried deep in the rubble of his hearts lies hope that one day it won’t hurt when he thinks of her, that he will be comforted by the fact that in that parallel universe, he finally returns Rose’s vow of forever – no longer an empty promise but a fixed reality. Hope that one day that thought may kindle inside him even the tiniest flicker of flame to guide him through the tempest of darkness ahead.

Hope.

He’s always quite liked that emotion.

And right now it’s all he’s got left to hold onto.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, my time between chapters is improving!! ;)
> 
> Ok so, my main comment for this is: this chapter is long. Super long. I haven't written a chapter this long since CS. I heavily considered splitting it in two, but all (3!) people who looked it over for me advised keeping it together. And I do agree it might mess up the flow if I were to post it up separately. In retrospect, I sort of wish maybe I'd inserted the first half of this chapter between chapters 4 and 5 as they stand now, because it'd make more sense that way, chronologically... but I just didn't expect for Tentoo to have so much to say. Like, half of this chapter wasn't even in my outline. He just... wouldn't stop bugging me to give him his due time (and to be fair, Amber wouldn't either). So, you can blame him if you like, for the length. He wouldn't shut up when I wanted him to. I suppose this is good, in the end. If I want to get the closure I'm searching for out of this fic, I have to leave no stone unturned.
> 
> Anyway! Hope you guys enjoy this double-decker chapter. It may not be what many of you are expecting, but I hope you like the addition nonetheless. Take breaks, bookmark for later, remember to blink and nourish yourselves, etc... cause it's a beast, but I do think it's an important beast (as resentful and bitter as I still am right now).
> 
> Thanks Amber, Kristina, and Heidi for their invaluable help getting this publication-ready!

He hadn’t intentionally lied when he told Rose he wasn’t tired.

His body doesn’t feel tired at all.

As scrawny and telepathically handicapped as since the moment he burst into existence, certainly. But his Earthling muscles have plenty of energy, and as inefficient as his single heart may be, it’s beating fast and robust against his ribs.

The tiredness is mostly in his mind. He just hadn’t noticed it while he was consumed with despair at what the other Doctor and Rose were up to.

Since she came to talk with him, though, he feels better. Not great, but better. Less obligated to force himself to stay awake, perhaps. Not like the entire world is resting its crushing weight on his chest. But without the unyielding panic of imminent rejection pumping him full enough of adrenaline that sleeping was out of the question, the mental fatigue is starting to take its toll. After the embarrassing amount of time he spent touching his cheek where her lips had been, he nearly fell asleep on the jump seat before leaping up to get back to work. His eyes feel dry, strained and exhausted like they never have before. If he doesn’t talk out loud to himself for too many minutes, they simply shut involuntarily, even when he’s standing up. It takes three attempts to adjust settings he can normally do in his sleep, five times longer than usual to fuse a simple frayed wire.

Same as the other Doctor, he hasn’t slept in several days, too preoccupied with finding the source of the Bad Wolf messages and then having to save the multiverse from certain destruction to get a kip in. Beyond that, he doesn’t think he’s truly had a proper night’s rest since he lost Rose; she was the only one who could calm his busy mind. Who could scare away the images that kept him awake at night with her light. Now more than ever, his brain being active nonstop for this long weighs on him, but he doesn’t want to succumb to sleep. Too many nightmares wait behind his eyelids to haunt him in his dreams, too many things could go wrong this night that he needs to stay alert for. The TARDIS did overexert herself towing the Earth home, but the repairs aren’t urgent enough to warrant sleep deprivation. They’re just an ideal cover story to avoid confronting the real reasons he’s avoiding sleep.

Rather than dwell on what he heard and fail miserably trying not to imagine it, he’s tried to remind himself in the hours of Rose’s absence that her choosing the other Doctor for the night is not a permanent decision (or so he hopes).

But sometimes, he slips.

He has had ample time to consider it, to put himself in her shoes and imagine what it must be like to be alone with the Doctor she remembers after all this time. However desperate he is to be close with her again, she must have felt the same when she found herself alone with the Time Lord wearing the suit she recognized, who hadn’t left her sight all evening. Who she had no doubt was the real thing. He aches to hold her. To touch her. Kiss her. Shag her _senseless_. So he knows she had to be feeling the same way. He has to understand that to her, he is something new and amorphous and unknown, and the other Doctor is someone wonderfully familiar. Concrete. And terribly tempting. He has to understand that she acted from the same whirlwind of emotion and desire that he would.

If given the opportunity, he would seclude them in his room without a second thought to his unlucky twin, because it’s been _so long_. The potent, instinctual need to reconnect, physically and mentally, flares so strongly in his mind (and admittedly, a little below the belt) it’s overwhelming. Nothing could hold him back if Rose wanted that from him, not the other Doctor or any other of their mutual friends or even his ship itself. If he and Rose were alone and she were willing, he would have no restraint to speak of either. A temporary lapse in her self-control is almost rational, given their circumstances.

Blimey, though, he wishes he had explained metacrises to her before they were separated, so she wouldn’t see him as a confusing entity that needed to be understood before she felt ready for that reconnection with him, too. It’s going to be torture waiting around for her to be ready. Especially if she goes on shagging the Other him in the meantime.

Who is he kidding? It already is torture. The muffled cries of pleasure from earlier in the night won’t stop echoing in his head, and every time they do it’s another stab to his fragile heart, an invisible blow to the chest that sends the air whooshing of his lungs. If he lets himself dwell on it, it will bring him to his knees from the sheer physical pain of envious longing. Either that, or a few more walls around the ship will have new, part-human fist-shaped dents in them.

But tinkering under the console eventually mollifies him as the last few things Rose said to him nestle comfortably in his heart. He doesn’t think she’ll leave him, or at least has much more confidence that she won’t. The sense of impending doom lingers, because he doesn’t know what the morning will bring, how the other Doctor will react to all this. Timelines are still in flux, though he can no longer see as many as he once could. He can see hints of Donna’s, even dimmer flashes of Martha’s and Jack’s. But only one potential future involving himself flickers dimly in the back of his mind, and it’s one in which he and Rose are alone somewhere he doesn’t recognize, and the full Time Lord is nowhere in sight. The ambiguous visions all appear in shades of murky gray, and he has to concentrate so intensely that he starts getting a headache before any actual solid details start to form. It’s incredibly frustrating.

He initiates contact with the TARDIS when he needs a break from repairs, to practice honing in his weakened telepathic skills, but that turns out to be equally maddening. The TARDIS can hear him just fine, powerful and ancient as she is, but it’s harder for him to tap into her conscience to form a bilateral line of communication. Simple emotions are easier to grasp, but coherent, complete thoughts – such as instructions or guidance – are another story. It takes measurable effort to hear everything she tries to tell him, and it’s as strange as it is distressing. His entire life it was as easy and natural as breathing to hear other telepathic creatures. He shouldn’t have to reach out or focus; she should just be there in his mind like she always has been.

Building up his skills to communicate with her, talking to her while he manually boosts a few of her systems to top shape, keeps him up well into the wee hours of the morning, despite being tired enough to fall asleep on the metal grating. And his stupid one heart sinks more by the hour at the prospect that he may never fully regain his prescient or telepathic abilities to the degree they once were.

\---

He jumps at Donna’s voice shouting behind him, hitting his head on the panel he’s currently under.

“Oof! Donna!?!?” he shouts in disbelief, poking his head out and staring incredulously at her. She’s dressed, smiling, and practically giddy. “What are you doing up?”

He climbs out of his workspace and smooths out the wrinkles in his suit.

“What? Is it not morning yet? Is anyone else up?” She looks mildly confused as she glances around the room to confirm no other signs of life, but not terribly bothered. Not as bothered as she should be.

“Donna, it’s only been like…” he thinks hard to calculate the time correctly. “Four hours since you passed out.”

“Four hours? That it?” She looks even happier than when she walked in. “I feel perfectly rested. Oh, that is brilliant! Think of all the time I’m gonna save! Think of how much more stuff we can do! Planets we can visit, galaxies we can save…” She must see the bemused look on his face, because she abruptly changes her demeanor, crossing her arms and pursing her lips. “What? What’s wrong?”

“No, no, it’s nothing,” he reassures her, shaking his head to steer the ominous trajectory of his thoughts toward a brighter path before giving her a genuine smile. “That is brilliant. Humans waste too much of their lives away sleeping, if you ask me.”

“So I’ve heard.” She rolls her eyes. Truly, there were many mornings he may have mentioned it when she wasn’t yet awake at the reasonable hour he wanted to depart.

“Listen, I’m just finishing up some maintenance before we get started taking everyone home. Why don’t you get us some tea started and I’ll meet you there in a tick?”

“No way, spaceman, I can help you!” She rubs her hands together and bounces on her toes, more excited than he was prepared for her to be. “I’m ready to learn how to fly the TARDIS!”

He chuckles humorlessly, carding a hand through his hair.

“Right. Uhm… well, before I can start training you, you’ll have to study some basic theory on time travel mechanics…” He rubs the back of his neck while he thinks of a plan to get a few more minutes of time alone. He isn’t prepared for what questions Donna may ask this morning, about her future, his, or anyone else’s.

Stricken with an idea, he dashes for the panel where he keeps some random assorted manuals and guides, choosing the first one and popping back up to hand it to her.

“There we are. That’s a good start.” He nods encouragingly.

She stares down at the heavy book in her hands, reading the title a bit skeptically.

“So, get busy with this one, and we’ll start up later, eh? I’ll meet you in a mo’.” He hears the brashness in his voice, so she must catch it too. She lingers silently for a few moments, narrowing her eyes and glancing suspiciously between the volume in her hands and his face. But she finally shrugs and acquiesces to his request for solitude.

“All right. I’ll get the tea started. But don’t think I won’t come looking for you if you never show.” She wags her index finger at him before whirling around and heading for the hallway with the book tucked under her arm.

It doesn’t give him much time, but it’s enough that he can consider what he’s going to tell her, if anything, about what the immediate future holds. Can he let on that her partially Time Lord consciousness will never survive in a fully human brain? Or is that better left as a disgustingly unpleasant surprise?

Suddenly he feels rather nauseated.

He can’t tell her, though. Or even hint at it. People should never learn of their fate prematurely. She’d try to convince him she’d rather die, probably, than give up what she’s had with him, but he can’t allow that. Plus, the other Doctor would just have another reason to condescend and scorn him if he gave her a piece of information without _his_ consent. No question he’s in charge around here, and there’s too much at stake for him to try to protest the pecking order now. Namely, whether he’ll even be allowed to stay in Rose’s life another day. Allowed to exist at all.

Funny how quickly things change. One minute you’re a Time Lord and the love of your life has just run back into your life, the next you’re a part-human accident that everyone seems to be tolerating and humoring but not accepting.

_We should wait for the Doctor._

_The proper Doctor can’t get drunk, I don’t think._

_Did you steal those from –_

It’s not like he asked to become a metacrisis. All he wanted was _not_ to change. (Ironic, that.) To stay the man Rose fell in love with so she’d still want him when he came out on the other side of regeneration. But he supposes the universe is cruel like that.

If only to him.

Maybe he should talk with Donna about all this. As long as it’s in private, what harm could it do? She might be able to give some insight on what he should do. How he should finish telling Rose who he is. How he can even consider approaching the other Doctor to have a rational discussion about the future. His future. His life, really. If he were in the other Doctor’s trainers (which, incidentally, he is), he’d probably want to kill this newer version. Before he could mess up his chances with Rose or squabble over ownership of the TARDIS or fight over which of them has the authority to make lethal decisions regarding the fate of the universe.

Two Doctors in one universe just isn’t going to work, is it?

_In one universe._

But there’s another universe waiting – the one Rose has been banished to for three-odd years.

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and tries to concentrate. To squeeze every last human instinct fighting for control of his psyche out of his mind and consider what the other Doctor is thinking.

Clearly, he’s thinking about keeping Rose around. Sleeping with her? He couldn’t possibly do that if he intended to let her go. It’s entirely impossible for sex to be strictly physical for him. He’s too starved for telepathic contact. He knows it wasn’t just a shag they were after last night; it was lovemaking in every sense of the word. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

His fists clench painfully against his forehead at the reminder, teeth gnashing together and breathing labored with the intensity of the jealousy and anger that creep up on him so fast. He never thought he’d be a third wheel where Rose was concerned.

But he’s been over this. She hasn’t rejected him, not yet. In time, he might get to have that too, a renewed mental connection with Rose. If he’s even still capable of it. It seems like he can sense the telepathic power he once had, but it feels almost vestigial. An echo of a sound he’ll never properly hear again. An afterimage. It’s challenging even to communicate with the TARDIS, and after some time aboard, even one-hundred-percent human Rose had no problem with that.

He can’t dwell on that frightening possibility. He has to believe it will work, if he really sets his mind to it. He just doesn’t have the courage to test it on anyone but Rose, because no one else knows and accepts him like she does. He thinks Donna has come close, and she might be willing to help him if he asked directly. But humans are different. Time Lords employ telepathy in relationships of all kinds: for his people, the union of minds isn’t restricted to romance. Certainly, it’s euphoric when used in a sexual context, but hardly its sole purpose. But as humans lack any analogous phenomenon, the physical closeness and depth of honesty it requires strongly suggests a desire for sensual intimacy. He learned that many lifetimes ago. It’s one of many reasons it took him ages to ask Rose if she wanted to know him that way. He couldn’t go through with it unless he was ready to accept the romantic repercussions that would inevitably follow.

He can hardly ask Donna to indulge him in that. He can be patient and wait for Rose to give it a go. What good is loving her, if he can’t be patient for her? She promised she wouldn’t leave him last night, and he has to take comfort in that promise, difficult as it is to believe. And impossible as it is to execute.

He’s going to stress himself into an early grave if he keeps this up. He should talk to Donna. She’s got to have some advice to offer, at least. She knows what Rose means to him. She has intuition he often lacks.

Before he can convince himself otherwise or find something else to distract himself with, he heads down the hall at a brisk pace.

Too brisk.

He nearly slams into a wall of brown pinstripes as he rounds the corner leading to the kitchen.

His doppelganger in brown stumbles back a few steps to avoid a collision, but the Doctor still nearly flees the doorway at the look on his face. He knows that face: he’s seen it in the mirror a thousand times. The fury and pain of loss. Seeing it directed at himself is frightening, and he automatically backs away from the other man’s penetrating glare, scrutinizing from his glasses down to his shoes with bottomless darkness in his eyes. He wants to say something, to ask for a private conversation and maybe attempt to appease his rage, but the words catch in his throat. This reflection of himself looks ready to murder him, and he doesn’t doubt his ability or willingness to do so. Not when the love of their lives hangs in the balance.

Despite what he knows transpired in the night, though, he can’t bring himself to harbor the same ire for the other man. There’s only one thing that expression can mean. One reason this Doctor would be so frighteningly angry at him. He thinks he’s going to lose Rose, and that somehow the metacrisis is to blame. Perhaps thinks that he’s planning on stealing her for himself.

Ironic, considering he’s the only one who’s stolen her away so far.

But he has to come back to his earlier point, that he’d have done the same, if Rose had asked. If he were going to be angry with anyone, it should probably be with her. But that’s completely unthinkable. She hasn’t done anything wrong.

“Doctor, wait –” Donna calls out to him, getting out of her chair with a grind against the floor.

“I’m fine,” the Doctor in brown insists, glancing back in her direction. “Don’t follow me,” he growls, averting his gaze to avoid eye contract with him again as he turns back to the doorway and brushes past him roughly in his escape.

The sound of his trainers echoes down the hall. Running. From what? Donna? _Him?_

“What was all that about?” he whispers to Donna, hoping the Other is out of earshot by now.

“Oh,” Donna sighs mournfully as she returns to her chair, a hand over her heart.

“What is it?” he asks, an edge of panic entering his voice, and joins her at the table.

“He’s… he said… oh…” A few tears escape her eyes before she can reach up to wipe them away.

“What did he say?” He gestures urgently. It must’ve been something huge, Donna doesn’t cry for naught.

“He’s… letting her go.”

Oh.

Oh, he… oh.

That singular timeline that has been phasing in and out of blurry view the last few hours, the one where he and Rose are together, tugs at his mind. Terrible picture quality, still, only extending a few hours into the future, and details are still too fuzzy to make out, but it’s no longer flickering in and out of existence. No longer in flux.

The critical decision has been made.

“What? No, he can’t… she…”

Suddenly, it’s very difficult to breathe.

He can’t find the right words. And it’s not as easy as it should be to speak when you’re hyperventilating but still feel like your lungs are emptied of oxygen. Since when does he hyperventilate???

Since he lost his respiratory bypass, apparently. It just gets worse by the minute.

He considered this. It was one of many options he’d thought through early on in the night: that in the end, maybe only one of them would be able to stay with Rose. He thought, selfishly, it made the most sense for him to be the lucky one in that scenario, because he isn’t going to outlive her anymore. Well, not by centuries, at any rate. The primary concern he’s held the past several years over the fate of their relationship is put to rest, if he’s in a body with a human lifespan and no regenerations.

Yes, he’d definitely considered it. Is considering it even more now that he has a fuzzy timeline tempting him to embrace it. Now that the death glare from moments before makes more sense in the context that he’s about to take her from him.

But he’d thrown out that option almost immediately, because such a scenario would be entirely out of his control. If only one of them could get to keep her, for whatever logistical or conventional reasons there may be, it would be Rose who got to choose which one she wanted. Neither of them could do that for her; Rose is too independent and too stubborn to let either of them make such a monumental decision.

He’d mused briefly about the kind of case he would make to win her over, if she expressed a desire to choose between them. But he never thought she’d go for that option. Especially not after what she said early this morning. After she promised she wouldn’t leave him. That promise was still implicit between her and the other Doctor, he assumed. It applied to them both (and if anything, to this part-human self just a little bit less than the original). It would be selfish to consider an option that took her freedom away.

But it sounds like the other Doctor intends to take that selfish option. Except, in his case it’s not selfish at all. From an outsider’s perspective, it’s self- _less_.

It’s self- _destructive_ , in fact.

It would kill him.

And she’ll never go for that. Won’t allow it. Does he not remember Canary Wharf? What is he _thinking?_

“What exactly did he say, Donna?” he asks, placing a hand on her arm delicately.

She recounts their exchange in out-of-order pieces.

The other Doctor thinks he, the metacrisis, is better for Rose.

From an objective standpoint, given everything he’s worried about since Rose came into his life, he’s right. Biologically, logistically better.

But does any of that really mean anything if Rose doesn’t care about it? She’s never cared about the age gap or the mismatched mortality. Why would she suddenly start now?

“How on earth does he plan to do that?” he asks incredulously, throwing his arms up in frustration.

“I dunno. But you know how _you_ are once you’ve made up your mind. I don’t think he’s going to change it.”

“But Donna, you don’t…”

“He’s got a point, though, hasn’t he?” she interrupts.

“What?”

“You’re part-human. You aren’t gonna outlive her. You won’t outlive anyone. I know how much that scares you, Doctor. You can’t fool me. And you can’t tell me it isn’t better that you can spend your whole life with her, rather than spending just _her_ life with her, then watching her die and having to carry on for lifetimes.”

He scratches at the back of his head, shaking his head angrily.

“I’ve thought about this more than you can imagine. But do you really think Rose and I never talked about it? After we… once we…” he trails off out of a misplaced sense of embarrassment.

“Shagged?” she smirks despite herself.

He breathes out an exasperated sigh, knowing in his hearts – he sighs again, _heart_ – that it was so much more than that, but nods to confirm her suggestion.

“You talked about it, though?” she asks.

“I didn’t have a choice.” He shrugs. “Rose wanted to talk about everything.”

“Women, right?” she teases.

“It’s not that,” he bites back angrily. He wasn’t trying to complain about Rose, and resented the implication. He would never. “Well, it’s not just that. She… knew me. You know I’m a touch telepath. That… part of me is very strongly stimulated during times like… that.”

“Oi, all right!” she grimaces, turning away from him and pushing her palms out. “This ain’t a locker room, spaceman!”

“You asked!”

Even though she did, he still feels his face heat up excessively. It’s not going to be easy to mask his emotions in this body.

“Anyway, it was hard to hide things like that. Recurring fears usually end up making themselves known, after a little while. But she knew even before that, that I was afraid. Because everyone withers and dies.”

“But not anymore,” she suggests.

“But she doesn’t care about that. She said I would never be happy if I didn’t let myself get close to anyone. She said I was like a bloke that didn’t want a dog because he knew the dog would die before he did.”

“That’s pretty good, actually,” she muses.

“I just sounded like an idiot when she put it that way. And… Rose can be very convincing.” A smirk pulls up the corner of his mouth and his left eyebrow twitches at a vivid memory of the night they had that conversation, and Donna smacks his arm.

“Oi, don’t be gross!”

“Sorry,” he pouts, rubbing his arm where she hit it.

“What’s he gonna do?” she asks, worry creasing her forehead.

“I dunno, I… Rose will never go for this. If he wants it to work, or if he wants… her to be with me, he’s going to have to force it on her. I can’t… I can’t go along with something like that. It doesn’t feel right. For me to reap the benefits of deception on that sort of scale.”

“Maybe she’ll want to choose you.”

He scoffs, rolling his eyes.

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Donna, we both know what happened last night. We know who she would choose.”

She sighs angrily, lacking an immediate rebuttal.

“Does she know about you though?” she asks after a moment of thought.

“What do you mean?”

“Does she know you’re really the Doctor, like I know? Does she know about the one heart and the human lifespan and everything?”

“Well,” he hedges, leaning his head to the side. “Sort of,” he lies, and she raises an eyebrow. “No, not really. She knows some things, but not that bit.”

“You need to tell her. That could be a deal breaker right there!”

“I was going to tell her,” he defends himself. “I just didn’t want to overwhelm her. And it will _not_ be a ‘deal breaker.’ You don’t understand what Rose is like, she doesn’t just… she’s not that selfish.” She’d never leave the Doctor she knows and loves alone just so she could fulfill some misplaced domestic dream to grow old with him.

“Never said she was.”

“Then what?”

“What about the other Doctor? Doesn’t it matter what he wants?”

“He wants her.” There’s no question there. Nothing in the universe is more certain, more constant than that fact. Donna is forgetting that he _was_ him less than a day ago.

“But he can’t have her.”

He balks.

“Not forever,” she appends. “But you can.”

“I…”

He doesn’t know how to refute that. It’s true. That night on the street outside the chip shop, just before they were discovered by the Krillitanes, he’d spoken that very truth to Rose.

_You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you._

While it’s still true for the other Doctor, it isn’t true for him. He can, at least in theory, if she wants him to, spend the rest of his paltry human life with her.

“He knows that. It’s eating away at him.”

He swallows hard, the first pangs of guilt catching up with him.

“It is?”

She nods somberly.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to have to watch her die. Maybe this – maybe letting her go now is less painful than the alternative.”

He thinks back to all the people he’s been forced to watch die, to how he suffered in the aftermath of the Time War, having to regenerate and carry on when everyone he loved was gone and the blood wouldn’t come off his hands. And he thinks it may be better this way, after all. He’d thought it on Canary Wharf, when he sent Rose away to stay with her family. Better to voluntarily give her up now, than to spend decades falling deeper in love with her only to watch her slowly succumb to mortality and be powerless to stop it. The only reason he’d acquiesced to her the first time was because she wanted him so badly in return. How could he deny her that, when it was so easy to give himself over to her?

“Maybe,” he finishes, downplaying his concurrence. “But Rose still won’t want to leave him. She knows how much he loves her.” How much she loves him. How vehemently she will fight to keep her promise of never leaving him.

_There’s me._

She made that promise the moment she’d said that to him, on their first date, before she even consciously knew she was making it.

“That’s why you need to tell her. You have to fight for her, Doctor, because no one else will. Certainly not the other Doctor.”

“How can I take part in that? _Willingly?_ ”

“He’ll do something drastic. Push her towards you.”

“Pressure her,” he adds, nodding reluctantly. He knows himself.

“You have to be there to catch her. If he pushes her away, she has to know you aren’t going to do the same. That you care about her. That you want to be with her. She’s going to need it.”

He’s silent for several beats, staring down at the table, churning through what Donna is saying. Perhaps he didn’t want to admit it before, but that’s exactly what he’ll do. If he wants Rose to choose the metacrisis, he’s going to do everything in his power to facilitate that. Distance himself. Make it seem like the only option. Maybe even purposefully abandon her somewhere like he tried to do on Canary Wharf. Somewhere she couldn’t come back from. Somewhere she’d be irrevocably stuck with him.

Somewhere like the parallel universe.

“Pete’s world,” he mumbles under his breath.

“Sorry?” Donna asks.

“The parallel universe Rose has been trapped in. He’s going to have to bring Jackie back, at least. He’s going to leave her there. Leave us there.”

“You think he’d just leave you both?”

“It’s the only way she won’t be able to find a way back. The only way he can be sure of the outcome.”

“But that’s… you think he’d force her like that?”

“I have before.”

The look of disappointment and hurt on Donna’s face stings.

“What do you mean?”

“I _tried,_ ” he amends. “Because her life was in danger. But even then, she wouldn’t let me. She came back.”

“Will she not come back this time?”

“She won’t be able to. Once he drops us off, he’ll seal the final breach and any dimension-jumping technology they’ve developed will revert to being useless again.” He closes his eyes to consider that for a moment. Blatantly disregarding her wishes. Throwing every promise she’s made back in her face. Presuming to know what’s best for her rather than letting her have a say. “I can’t do that to her.” He shakes his head resolutely.

“But would you if you were him?”

“I _AM_ HIM,” he snaps, his temper shooting off without warning again.

“Oh, calm down,” she barks. “I meant if you weren’t part-human.” Her eyes grow wide as she implores him, and he sighs, defeated.

“When I saw her on that street, Donna, I knew things were different.” The sheer euphoria rushing through him in that moment was almost too much to bear, her running towards him, the only light he could see on a dark path of asphalt and automobile debris. “I swore to myself that the moment she was in my arms, I’d never let her out of them.”

She’s quiet.

“The universe had other plans,” he mutters.

“You don’t think it’d be better this way?”

She isn’t condescending, or encouraging him one way or another. She’s just here to listen. To prod a little, sure, but to respect what he’s feeling and offer insight where she can. She really _does_ accept him. How is he ever going to live without his best mate?

“Honestly?” He pulls a face and exhales heavily above his head, thinking. He’s always thought it’d be better if he were human. Countless times. He’d by lying to Donna and himself to claim otherwise. “Yeah, I do. But it’s easy for me to say that, when I’m not the one getting the bum end of the deal.”

“Oi, you’d be losin’ me,” she gripes.

_We’re both losing you._

“That’s true.” He smiles a sad smile that she knows well. “Maybe I am getting the bum end of the deal.”

“You love her, though.”

“Mmm.” He nods feebly.

“Have you told her?”

He looks down at the table.

“There hasn’t exactly been a good time.”

“Have you _ever_ told her?”

He stares resolutely at the tea kettle on the counter, silent.

“God, all you men are the same.” He can see her shaking her head in his peripheral vision.

“I’ll tell her, all right?” he snaps back. That defensive side of him again, not liking his affections questioned. “Just… the time hasn’t been right.”

“Tell who what?”

Jackie’s voice rings out from behind him, causing him to jump out of his chair.

“No one!” He scrambles out of his chair and turns around. “Nothing!” He beams at her as genuinely as he’s able to. “Morning, Jackie. Cuppa?”

She narrows her eyes and looks him up and down a couple times, but eventually just shrugs.

“Ta.”

With a quick glance to Donna to silently plead with her to speak none of this to anyone (that she quickly understands with a subtle nod), he moseys over to the kettle to pour himself (and Jackie) a cup of tea.

\---

The rest of the morning passes too quickly. As each of the guests emerges from their assorted rooms, the first thing thing they all go on about is all the many reasons they have to get home.

Of course they all have to be leaving. Jack’s got his Torchwood team, and from the sound of it, a man he seems almost ready to settle down with (absurd as that would seem to anyone who’s ever known the captain). Martha has her team at UNIT and her family to get back to. He isn’t sure what Mickey will want, but he’s absolutely certain he won’t want to stick around in the TARDIS and get caught up in the drama that will inevitably ensue. Sarah will have to get back to Luke, and Jackie to Pete and the newest addition to their family. He hasn’t had a chance to ask about that, come to think of it.

Before he can really prepare himself for it, everyone is bidding him farewell in their own characteristic and not-very-subtle way. Indulging requests for formal goodbyes is something he would normally never do, but this might be the last time he ever sees any of them, so he figures he can make an exception.

One by one, they all strive to steal some time alone with him, catching up on details they didn’t have time for the night before and wishing him all the best in the future (which they all assume is with Rose). There are more pleading requests for him to come and visit them than he’d have expected. Do none of them really understand the situation the three of them are in? That there’s no painless escape from a love triangle with two copies of one person and only one of the other?

It certainly seems like they don’t. Or maybe they just think it isn’t their place to say anything without being prompted. Either way, he doesn’t bother telling them the truth. He wouldn’t know how to approach such a conversation anyway, and one of them would surely repeat it to Rose, if he did. Best to put on a brave face and thank them for their friendship as though he isn’t departing their lives forever, lest he cause unnecessary emotional turmoil.

Only one person doesn’t get a proper goodbye, because the moment he attempts to, Rose comes into view, dragging her feet sleepily down the hall.

“In case I don’t get another chance to say it,” he murmurs when Donna finishes flirting with Jack, catching her by the arm as she walks past him, trying to swallow the lump forming in his throat. “Goodbye.” The single whispered word breaks in the middle as he meets her eyes. “And thank you.”

She doesn’t want to let on to Rose any more than he does what may be about to happen, so she doesn’t even hug him, opting instead for a firm, lingering squeeze of his hand and a somber smile.

He mirrors the small morsel of reassurance subconsciously. Donna always could make him smile when he didn’t want to.

“Goodbye, Spaceman.”

He wishes they’d had a few minutes more time alone, because she deserves so much more from him. But he has to at least be grateful that he got to hear her say that before she forgets.

Rose is the last to wake up, and he’s glad for it, knowing how rough the last few years must have been on her. But she doesn’t pull him aside like the others. Only spares him a shy ‘good morning’ and touches him once on the arm as she heads for the kitchen. She spends her time saying goodbye to everyone else, and spends an inordinate amount of time staining Mickey’s clothes with tears when she discovers he won’t be sticking around.

After almost an hour of torturing himself wondering why she won’t talk to him, he rationalizes to himself how it could possibly be a good sign that she isn’t devoting time to him now: it must mean she thinks they’ll have plenty of time to talk in the future. But she has no idea how mistaken that assumption is. He keeps a close on eye on her, waiting to catch her in a moment alone. But anytime she’s not saying goodbye to a friend, her mother gets her attention, asking what she’s planning on doing now that she has two Doctors, and after a while he stops trying. Even if he could manage to sneak in a private conversation, he doesn’t even know how to begin to tell her what the other Doctor is planning. Let alone how to be brief about it and keep it discreet from everyone else.

In fact, the first real chance he gets to speak to Rose alone is as the Doctor in brown is escorting most of their guests outside to see them off. And he freezes up. With only moments left before the other Doctor will burst through that door and turn their world upside down, he doesn’t know what to say to her. Or how she’ll react if he tries to tell her the truth. And he’s suddenly anxious she’ll assume he’s playing a part in this, pulling the strings from behind a curtain just as much as the other one. And if Rose is about to make a decision between the two of them, and if he can even _dream_ to be the one she chooses, he has to appear the better man. As a bloke with hardly any of the same unique alien qualities that made her fall for him in the first place – the telepathy, the two hearts, the TARDIS  – he’s going to have to…

Oh.

His throat closes up as that last reality sinks in.

Somehow, in the chaos of it all, he had failed to consider a massive consequence of the other Doctor’s self-righteous plan: losing the TARDIS. The only constant companionship he’s had for too many decades to count. His home. His friend. The only telepathic presence in his mind that keeps his lonely Time Lord brain satiated when there’s no one else around to connect with. The only one who’s there for him when no one else is.

Oh, no. He _can’t._

The crushing despair that consumed him on Krop Tor– when he thought the TARDIS was lost to him forever – returns to cast its dark shadow over him again.

That first night on the Sanctuary Base, on a tiny, hard cot in a claustrophobic shared room, Rose had been his only ray of hope. Rather than staring into the black hole of his bleak domesticated future, the soft yellow light she carried inside of her kept the darkness at bay as she kissed and held him. But even with Rose’s support, he doesn’t know how long it would’ve taken him to come to terms with that loss, had she truly perished. The rhythmic beat of the heart of the TARDIS is such a soothing, eternal comfort in his mind. The thought of losing her forever terrifies him to the point of trembling.

But then he happens to glance over at Rose, and she catches him looking and smiles at him from across the console. Suddenly, his breathing slows to a normal rate and volume, and the tremors in his hands and his chest calm to stillness once more. The panic slowly recedes, prevented from breaking the dams holding it all inside. He knew, back on that impossible planet, that he wouldn’t have been able to endure losing the TARDIS without Rose by his side. But that was never about choosing between them. If given an ultimatum, then or now, he’d choose Rose, without question. The TARDIS is invaluable to him; there have been so many times in his life that she was literally the only thing he had. But he knows what it’s like to live without Rose, and he never wants to do it again.

The TARDIS overhears his internal struggle, and agrees with him rather loudly.

_Damn right, Time Lord._ Or something along those lines.

She’s never been shy about encouraging his relationship with Rose.

Maybe he’s jumping to conclusions too quickly. He has no way of being sure that the other Doctor will follow through with his improvised plan.

But the TARDIS swiftly and powerfully suggests that he _will_ follow through.

The panic starts to well up again. The TARDIS has a direct line of communication with the other Doctor. If she gives him intel, he has no choice but to believe it.

_How am I gonna live without you?_ he rushes out in his mind, reverting back to his native tongue subconsciously.

A fleeting vision of him and Rose holding hands on a concrete path flashes in his mind, but their silent conversation is interrupted by the front door squeaking open.

“There’s time for one last trip,” the brown-clad Doctor announces to the thinned-out crowd, already punching in coordinates.

“Darlig Ulv Stranden.” Pulling the monitor closer, he casts a glance over at him, and time slows down as he holds the eye contact, an unmistakable warning in his glare. _Yes, this is happening._

It’s only a matter of seconds before they land. Seconds have never passed so quickly in his life.

_Thank you for everything,_ he projects clearly to the TARDIS, furiously blinking away the moisture welling in his eyes. _I’ll miss you._

A deluge of love and grief rushes through him from his ship at the impending separation.

_Take care of him,_ he adds.

With an imaginary but enthusiastic nod, she tells him goodbye with one final bit of advice for him.

_Take care of_ her.

And then it’s time to walk out of the doors for the last time.

It’s bloody freezing on this beach. And of course, cloudy. Norway can’t give him sunshine and blue skies on the day he finally confesses his love. The gray clouds hovering over the sea only serve as portents of doom to his nervous heart.

He makes small talk with Jackie, if only to avoid dropping to his knees in the sand and begging Rose to stay with him. He hasn’t even thought through what he’s going to say. Donna is right about the general sense of what his opening statement should be, he thinks, but any actual words or sentences are unfortunately destined to be improvised. Rehearsing would’ve been a good idea, if he’d had the emotional stability to think of it. This is his only chance to show Rose who he is and make a convincing argument that she shouldn’t turn around and dive back into the TARDIS and leave him here bereaved of them both.

He tries to watch Rose’s reaction to where they’ve landed, but hasn’t looked in his direction.

“Hold on this is… the parallel universe, right?”

“You’re back home,” the Doctor in brown declares, his face a careful mask of stoicism that he knows well. Can feel the effort it takes to hold it in place.

“And this world is sealing itself off,” Donna adds. She’s going along with this without hesitation, evidently. For some reason he hadn’t expected her to play an active, verbal part in what followed, even if she did endorse it. “Now that the reality bomb never happened. It’s dimensional retroclosure. See? I really get that stuff now.”

He smiles halfheartedly at Donna.

“No, but, I spent all that time trying to find you,” Rose exclaims. “I’m not going back now!”

Now _that_ he expected.

She’s never going to go for this. He’s known that from the start. There would have been no sense in practicing what he’s going to say to try to put forth his offer, because she’s never going to take it.

He can’t say anything, though, not yet. He refuses to be the instigator in this, and depending on what explanation the other Doctor gives for thrusting this ultimatum on her, will change how he wants to approach her in the aftermath.

“But you’ve got to,” his counterpart insists, trudging a few steps through the sand toward her. “’Cause we saved the universe, but at a cost.” He nods over to him, bitterness coloring his expression. “And that cost is him.”

What?

“He destroyed the Daleks. Committed genocide. He’s too dangerous to be left on this own.”

_What?_

‘Too dangerous to be left on his own?’ _That’s_ the story this arsehole is going with?

There was simply no other choice to be made! If he hadn’t been on the Crucible, this Doctor would have been forced to make the same decision!

“You made me,” he accuses.

They’re the same man. He was created from spent regeneration energy unique to his genetic signature, body and mind fashioned from the same stuff as his. They’d both have made the same call, there’s no question. It was between the Daleks and the universe, and he knew no one else would have stood up and made the difficult decision. No one else ever does. It’s a curse he’s come to accept. This insinuation that they’re any mentally or philosophically different is a load of shit.

“Exactly, you were born in battle,” he bites back, silencing him. “Full of blood and anger and revenge.”

He turns his gaze back to Rose, and his expression softens considerably before he speaks again. “Remind you of someone?”

Rose turns away from him, staring out at the sea.

Blimey, he wishes he could see her face. See how she’s taking all of this. If she’s buying it even a little bit. He certainly isn’t. Donna obviously can’t be, either – she looks saddened and a little disappointed at the logic he’s employing. But he could just be projecting.

“That’s me, when we first met,” the other Doctor continues. Suddenly he understands what his Other is doing. The temporal parallel he’s trying to draw.

Admittedly, he may have some trouble sleeping for a while knowing he had to resort to murder again on such a large scale. But he offered them clemency, and Davros didn’t take it. He always gives everyone a choice, but has no way of guaranteeing they’ll make the correct one.

He supposes there is some validity to the comparison, on a shallow level. He had to do what was necessary in both cases, and didn’t receive moral guidance from anyone beforehand. But this is hardly analogous to the Time War, is it? Millions of innocents didn’t have to die today for him to suppress the Dalek threat.

It’s not the same.

“You made me better. Now you can do the same for him.”

Poetic.

“But he’s not you.” He can hear the tears in Rose’s voice.

There we are, then.

That’s… right in his… one heart. A visceral, sharp throb.

Going along with this was a terrible idea.

Everything she said last night must’ve been a lie, like he’s been afraid of.

Then again… even though she said she wouldn’t leave him… did she ever really admit she believed he was the Doctor? The only thing she replied to him when he said he was was ‘how, though?’

He must’ve been reading it wrong all along. She hasn’t actually lied about anything, or broken any promises. Just because she wasn’t planning to leave didn’t mean she thought of them as equals. She made that clear when she slept with _him_ on their first night together and didn’t bother to even come looking for him again for hours. How thick could he possibly be?

“He needs you. That’s very me.”

That much isn’t a lie at all. They both need her.

But she only needs one of them.

It was easier for her to reassure him that he mattered last night, when she didn’t know what the future held. When her relationship with the other Doctor wasn’t in jeopardy. She’s open-minded enough, and her heart big enough, to accept him as someone deserving of her love even if she didn’t think of him quite the same way. But when push comes to shove, as it is now, when they’re down to the wire and she’s being pressured to make a choice, it’s an obvious one for her. She doesn’t really accept his identity. Staying with him and leaving the other would be unthinkable.

He can’t blame her. How could she be expected to understand? She’s had to deal with so many exotic alien quirks from him over the years, it makes sense that she’s reached her limit for what she can handle.

 “But it’s better than that, though!” Donna chimes in. “Don’t you see what he’s trying to give you?” She nods to the man in brown, then to him. “Tell her, go on!”

_Tell her what we talked about_ , she commands with an intense gaze in his direction.

Rose swivels around slowly.

He was right about the tears: her eyes and cheeks are red and a single fresh droplet runs down her face.

Okay, okay. He needs to put the self-pity aside and talk to her. Maybe she doesn’t think he’s the Doctor because he hasn’t fully explained it to her yet. Maybe she will understand if he just clarifies what he meant. She seemed to be starting to understand, in the middle of the night as they talked about the Olympics, he thought she was accepting him… but maybe she needs it to be more explicit than that. A no-frills explanation of just how… himself he is.

Prioritize, prioritize…

“I look like him, I think like him. Same memories, same thoughts, same everything.”

She’s at least hearing him out, giving him her undivided attention. But it’s hard to even breathe, much less speak or keep himself upright when his heart is racing like this. What if he says the wrong thing? This is his only shot to change her mind about him. But the pressing fear that in only a few minutes’ time he could be facing this beach completely alone makes his thought processes much slower than usual.

He takes a deep breath.

“Except I’ve only got one heart.”

“Which means?” she asks, confused but he thinks, at least a little bit, intrigued.

“I’m part-human. Specifically, the aging part. I’ll grow old and never regenerate.”

Her frown begins to disappear, and a tiny flicker of hope alights in his chest.

“I’ve only got one life, Rose Tyler.”

The confusion in her eyes slowly transforms to understanding.

She really had no idea.

“I could spend it with you.” He gives her a tiny shrug. “If you want.”

“You’ll grow old at the same time as me?” Her lips twitch just a little bit upwards. It’s not quite a smile, and it’s hardly detectable, but it’s a step in the right direction.

He should’ve led with this last night. This is what he not-very-secretly always wanted, what he’d accidentally lamented to her in his mind on emotional nights in bed together, that everything would be easier if he were a human, too.

“Together,” he affirms with a gentle smile.

It’s a real smile now, curving up her lips. It’s delicate, and vestiges of sadness in her eyes threaten to shatter it at any moment, but right now, Rose Tyler is smiling at him. It’s working, it must be working. He can see the gears turning in her head, processing everything she’s heard, trying to make sense of it. To consider the possibilities of what it could mean for them.

She takes a step forward, holding out her hand tentatively. His entire body stills, letting her take the reins. She rests her hand on his chest just above the first button of his jacket, and pushes forward one finger at a time, adjusting the pressure until she can feel it: the single heartbeat barely keeping him vertical right now.

She’s only touched him three times since she’s been back, but now that she is again, he never wants her to stop.

_Please choose me._ He tries to tell her with his eyes, imploring into hers. _He wants you to._ _Don’t leave me on my own. I love you._

The TARDIS wheezes out a diseased groan in the distance, and Rose’s hand drops from his chest as she turns to the sound.

“We’ve got to go,” the other Doctor says, tight-lipped. “This reality is sealing itself off, forever.” He turns away from her, drags his trainers towards the TARDIS with his head down.

He can’t imagine how difficult it would be, if it would even be possible for him right now, to walk away from her on purpose. Watching her chase after the other Doctor as he goes is just about enough to do him in.

“But it’s still not right!” she cries after him, and he turns reluctantly.

It’s still not right.

He told her everything he possibly could, offered his one heart and his entire life over to her, but _it’s still not right._

Losing her was one thing. Being openly rejected by her is another entirely. The cold, sharp aching behind his ribs returns with a vengeance, and hot tears prick behind his eyes.

 “’Cause the Doctor’s still you,” she continues, faltering slightly at the grave look on the other man’s face.

“And I’m him.” The Doctor in brown gestures back to him.

Rose pauses for a moment before answering.

“All right,” she speaks up, new hope in her voice. “Both of you, answer me this.” She looks between the two of them.

_Both_ of you. He still has a chance yet. Hope isn’t lost!

He steps forward, determined to do or say anything.

His counterpart glances over at him with a solemn warning in his eyes.

_Don’t muck this up._

_Don’t muck it up for me,_ he counters silently, eyebrows pulling together angrily.

“When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me?” She’s only looking at the other Doctor now, choosing him first as she has over and over since she got back. Waiting for him. “Go on, say it!”

The Doctor opposite him swallows hard.

“I said ‘Rose Tyler.’” He presses his lips together to prevent saying anything more.

“Yeah, and… how was that sentence gonna end?”

Time stands still as they both wait for him to answer.

“Does it need saying?”

This is his final play, then. This is how he makes it painfully clear that he’ll do or say anything to push Rose into his arms when she won’t go into them willingly. He’s been ready to say it since that day on the beach. He’s been _waiting_ to tell her properly. When he saw her on that deserted, wrecked street, it was the only thought running through his head: that he couldn’t wait to finish that sentence. Sure, he was planning to do it in private, when the moment was right for them, rather than going around shouting it to all his mates, but he knows he hasn’t changed that much since becoming part-human. He loves her, he knows it needs saying, and damn it, he wants to say it. But he’s holding back to make her want to choose this him.

If he tells her, when the other Doctor has refused to?

That’s a much easier choice for her to make, isn’t it?

It’s sadistic. This is a cruel game that Rose doesn’t deserve to be a victim of. But if he doesn’t go along with it, if he calls the other Doctor out on his lie, or refuses to say the words, too, he’ll be left on his own. That’s simply a statement of fact. And he can’t do it. He can’t let her go. He’s always loved Rose, but it’s just… so potent in this body. His entire being is calling out for her, _screaming_.

The other Doctor is relinquishing his chance at happiness. Quite vehemently. Why should he have to do the same? He thinks Rose can be happy with him, eventually. She told him, when they went back to save her father, that she didn’t come along with him for the ‘travels in time’ bit. She told him again, when they thought they’d lost the TARDIS on Krop Tor: ‘Stuck with you? That’s not so bad.’ She’s told him a thousand different ways that it wasn’t the TARDIS, the galaxies or the time traveling that came with it, that made her want to stay. It was just _him._

He only hopes that will still apply when he’s part-human, too.

Something Donna said to him this morning echoes in his head.

_If he pushes her away, she has to know you aren’t going to do the same. That you care about her. That you want to be with her. She’s going to need it._

That’s the most important thing right now. Not playing games, but reassuring her that he does love her. And want to spend his life with her.

“And you, Doctor?” Her voice is small as she turns to look at him, unfathomable hurt in her eyes from what the other man just said. “What was the end of that sentence?”

_I’ll always love you._

It’s what he’d been about to say, before the projection of the sand and waves and Rose faded from view. His objective was to leave her with no question that not only did he reciprocate her feelings, but that no matter where he went, how long he lived, or who else he met along the way, he always would. Should he stick with that – absolute honesty? Or just say ‘I love you,’ pure and simple? Maybe ‘I’ve always loved you,’ which carries the implication the idiot across from him does, too, whether or not he’ll admit it right now?

Their final moments on that beach have scarcely left him an hour of peace since that day. Even though he’d already known for quite some time, he’d never projected himself there expecting her to tell him to his face. It had always been implicit between them, something they both knew but neither had the courage to say. But before she lost him forever, she thought it was important that it was stated unequivocally. He’ll never forget how she looked in those last few seconds, tears streaming down her face as she sobbed out the last words she thought she’d ever speak to him.

But now Rose is asking a question that could potentially be the start of a new relationship for them. And he doesn’t want to enter a new relationship, or a new era in an existing one, he supposes more accurately, with anything but the whole truth, even if a hypothetical half-truth were made with only good intentions. So he’ll say exactly what he was poised to say that moment all those years ago.

He takes a tiny step closer to her, stroking his hand up and down her arm in what he hopes is a soothing gesture. Leans close, because the other Doctor doesn’t deserve to hear this after what he’s just done. _Does it need saying._ What bollocks.

He whispers it in her ear, hoping the wind will drown out the noise for the rest of their immediate audience. It was initially intended to be a private confession, anyway.

As he pulls back, gauging her reaction, the sound of the waves quiets, the feel of the chilled wind against his cheek fades, and his heart just stops altogether. Whatever happens next will decide his fate, for the rest of his measly little life. Will she react positively, choose him? React with anger and turn on the other Doctor, demanding to know why he won’t say it, too? Or will she shout at them both to put a stop to the games and just talk to her properly? The chances of this ending well for him are so, incredibly small. Could he really have convinced her he’s the preferable choice in the span of less than a minute? Is it even possible?

In this one moment, he has no idea what Rose Tyler will do.

But as she’s known to do, she surprises him.

Reaching up for the lapels of his jacket, she gets a firm grip on the fabric and tugs his mouth down to hers.

_Rose Tyler is kissing him._

Even though he’s part-human and maybe not quite the same as the original in her eyes, she believes him. At least a part of her does (the same part that controls her lips). He can’t help but indulge her in it, though the logical side of his mind knows they should be talking rather than snogging. It’s so urgent, the way she moves against him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down while she lifts up on her toes, pressing her mouth firmer against his. Her lips are cold and a little dry and chapped from the wind, but it still feels like warm sparks are flying from where they touch his. Pleasurable shockwaves go straight to his groin when she lifts a hand to brush through the back of his hair. He can’t sense the passage of time or pay attention to timelines while she’s pressed against him like this: his very existence is tethered to this kiss.

But suddenly, he hears the distant, quiet squeak of the TARDIS door opening. They’re leaving. The other Doctor, with Donna. They’re going to leave.

He has to tell Rose.

He wants to believe that in kissing him she made her choice, but just because she made this choice in this moment doesn’t mean she has consented for it to be a permanent one. She doesn’t know that by extending this moment of passion, that she’ll lose the chance to even say goodbye to the man she loves.

But it feels so good, to finally be accepted by her again. To wrap his arms around her waist and crush her against him and let his insides melt as he reacquaints himself with the curve and taste of her lips, the way their mouths fit perfectly together. If she made the choice in this moment, that means eventually she’ll fully come to terms with the fact that he’s the same man, doesn’t it? That she won’t regret this choice, even when it was made under such duress?

Does that mentality make him no better than his counterpart, pulling the strings like his authority still transcends that of any human?

But no matter what line of thought he follows, selfishly, he can’t pull away. He never wants to let Rose out of his arms again, and certainly not when he’s only just seconds ago gotten her into them.

But as the door slams shut, Rose wrenches herself away. Turns back to where the TARDIS stands in shock.

Before he can stop her, she’s running towards the whooshing, fading figure of the blue box, but it’s too late.

_Goodbye, old girl_ , he projects as forcefully as he can inside his mind, before the last tendrils of the time ship’s consciousness fade from his weak telepathic senses.

He watches her skid to a stop in the sand with a lump in his throat, as the last ghostly image of the TARDIS fades, and the metallic wheezing withers into nothing. She doesn’t move, glued to the sand, facing where the box stood only moments before, her breathing shallow and distraught.

Does she regret what just happened already?

He should have told her.

By withholding information he played just as much an active role in this as the other man in tricking her into staying with him.

She doesn’t say anything to him, doesn’t scream or cry.

She doesn’t drop to her knees or whirl around to him in rage. She’s just still as a statue, a monument to where the TARDIS once stood.

He steps forward deliberately until he’s by her side, and reaches for one of her empty hands. She clasps his hand in hers automatically, her thumb brushing lightly over his, and it doesn’t feel overheated to him anymore, or slightly clammy compared to his own, it feels exactly the same temperature as his. No matter what happens, or how she feels about him right now, he wants her to know he’s here for her, for it to act as an early symbol of his new commitment. But he can’t muster the courage to look at her, too afraid of seeing tears or regret or anger on her face, so stares down at their joined hands instead.

But when she hesitantly turns her head out of the corner of his eye, he turns to meet her, and his heart clenches when he sees all three: fresh tears in her eyes, regret and anger etched into her features. And as the seconds go by, the tears start to spill over, and those emotions only grow more pronounced.

He doesn’t know what to say. What to do. He tries to think of something, any words to say to try to explain himself, to comfort her, to promise her he’ll do everything he can to make it better, but sheer terror prevents any coherent thoughts from even forming. Fear that she’ll be rejecting him flat-out any moment, saying the kiss was a mistake. Fear that she may be so upset he will never see her again after they leave this beach. The crippling anxiety that the TARDIS is gone quietly begs for his attention, somewhere deep in the back of his mind. His limbs are all numb and frozen with it, so he can’t even pull her into a codependent hug.

With dread, he realizes he needs her reassurance just as much as she needs his right now.

But that very moment, Rose lets go of his hand, and it drops against his thigh a dead weight.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, I'm pretty nervous about this. The first post-JE chapter! I've been informed by my betas that this chapter is quite painful, so this is me warning you guys in advance. I recognize it might seem harsh now, but I promise it won't stay that way. How does that saying go, the darkest part of night is just before dawn? It's like that. And the sun has only just set, basically. On the plus side, my timeline is certainly getting better, it's only been a few weeks! :) Anyway, cookies and hugs to my loyal readers on this one. I'm here for you.

As the last impression of the TARDIS fades from the sand, it take Rose’s heart with it. The ghost of a blue box dimly flickers for the last time, and the endless backdrop of coastline, sky, and sea once more become walls of her prison cell. The echoes of her treasured home ripping through time slowly die in the wind, the once quiet constant roll of waves and whistle of wind grow deafeningly loud in the wake of the ship’s departure, as Rose strains through the clamor to hear one last metallic groan.

No.

Not again.

Vaguely, she registers the presence of another person next to her, reaching for her hand. Finding the feel and fit familiar, she grips it back automatically.

It feels like a man’s hand, broad and sturdy and calloused. It’s just the right size, and hers fits inside it just the right way. Still staring after the long-vanished image of the TARDIS, she catches sight of a bright blue suit and an abstract mass of brown hair in her periphery. The Doctor. So why does she not feel comforted by the gesture?

Because. He may be ‘the Doctor’ (or so he claims), but he isn’t _her_ Doctor. She hardly left her Doctor’s sight since she found him on that deserted street, she knows him. Inside and out. And this man looks like him, and acts like him, but he doesn’t _feel_ like him. He… expresses himself differently. His palm is warm and clammy despite the nippy air. His lips feel different. (She subtly swipes her tongue across her bottom lip.) Taste different too.

Last night, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t feel quite the same, despite the fact that he evidently remembered their history together. Though she _wanted_ to want it, she knew that desire was for his sake, not hers. She hadn’t felt ready to even kiss him. She never needed two Doctors, after all. With just the one finally back in her arms, she was content. And that feeling hasn’t magically gone away. The tension of their circumstances and his sudden confession boosted her preparedness enough to take him by the collar and thank him for his sincerity with a snog, but it was a spur of the moment decision, made in the heat of passion. Right now, she isn’t even certain if she kissed him for _him_ , or because he looks and sounds like the Doctor she really wants, and hearing him say he loved her was like hearing _him_ say it. Now that the high of the moment is gone, she’s leaning towards the latter.

It isn’t his fault. He didn’t ask to be created or dropped off here and he doesn’t deserve mistreatment or to be left alone. The previous night, when she said she wouldn’t leave him, she meant it. But she never thought the proper Doctor would be removed from the equation. It’s easier to try to accept something new when what’s established and beloved in your life isn’t being taken away.

She never would have chosen between them voluntarily. Better to do her part by abandoning neither than to decide on one and leave a Doctor, authentic or not, with nothing but a broken promise. But if she’s perfectly honest with herself, if forced to make a decision by some transcendent power, she’d never have chosen this. To be left with the duplicate, the one she’d barely started to understand? To stay trapped in the universe she scorns as much today as she did the day she was first locked inside of it? To never even be able to travel with him anymore, to lose the TARDIS?

Okay, she doesn’t need the last bit. That was a selfish thought.

But suddenly a gruesome sort of queasiness distracts her attention back to reality. A visceral tugging deep in her stomach that this is only the beginning of the suffering. When to think mere hours before she thought her suffering was over.

After years of suppressing things as vulnerable as tears, the pain quickly finds an outlet in anger instead. The bloody meta-whatever. It’s his fault. She glances over at him, and he mirrors her movement, his returning gaze quiet, pensive, and not at all apologetic.

 It’s his fault. Just for existing. Without him this would never have happened. She’d never have had to break her promise, or even consider breaking it; it would be out of the question as it always has been. She doesn’t want it to be his fault, but there’s no denying it is. He didn’t even try to stop the other Doctor, did he? He may not have been in on it, but he didn’t stop it. Or even warn her.

She abruptly tugs her hand free from his grasp.

This isn’t what she wanted.

A thick fog wafts through her head, clouding over every one of her thoughts until only one image remains. A Time Lord in a brown suit, staring back at her through the haze of gray, accusations of rejection carved into forlorn features. His hair is matted down with water, the corners of his mouth weighed down with sadness. His hands are in his pockets as he stares across the intangible distance, still as stone even as as the cold, heavy mist collects on his clothes.

A chill runs down her spine, a freezing shiver that makes her bones ache as much as her heart.

“Did he… he really left?” she croaks out, almost no volume in her voice.

He doesn’t answer for a few seconds, and she looks over at him, clenching and unclenching his now empty fist. When he sees the tears welling in her eyes, he nods his head slowly, just once.

She doesn’t want to cry, especially not in front of him, but a few tears spill over before her tattered nets of stoicism can catch them. The strength drains from her body with the droplets of salty water, until her knees hit the damp sand with a muffled crunch. She sags back onto her heels and stares down at where the TARDIS once stood, fighting to put up some kind of emotional dams to keep from reliving the mental breakdown she suffered the first time on this beach.

What made him think he had to leave? What could possibly have changed in the few hours between being soothed to sleep by the lullaby of lovemaking and deciding to dump her here? How could he have gone from anxious tears and the tempest of fear in his mind at the thought of losing her again to this, to coldly insisting she stay behind? To running away again, without even telling her? He’s a champion of the ascetic. Takes mercurial to a new level.

With all the inadvertent dishonesty and mood swings, is he even worth going after?

_Yes_ , she answers herself before she even finishes the question. Instinctually.

Even though he won’t say it out loud (emotionally stunted, masochistic prick), he loves her. He does. No one could see what she’d seen in his head the night before and not be utterly, irrevocably convinced of that. If she had known why precisely he’d been so frightened, why he was so preoccupied with the fear of losing her a second time, she would have spent the entire night talking him out of this lunacy. Prioritized it, even, over anything physical.

It makes total sense, in retrospect. He held her like it was the last time he was ever going to, amidst a torrent of fearful despair that she had a glimpse of before he acclimated to their renewed connection and buried it someplace she couldn’t see. A taste of what his mental state was like while they were apart, a preview of what it would be like if she were to leave again. She’d helped to calm him down the same way she used to when he had nightmares of the Time War, early on in their travels together. With little more than a soothing mental presence and a hand to hold (and fine, the orgasm probably helped, too). But if she had known what led the panic to possess him… she… Christ, she should have known. No matter how bad it may have become when she was gone, what other cause would there have been for negativity, even as they mentally and physically _reunited_?

She wasn’t thinking about it so analytically at the time. She only wanted to help him in that moment. She only ever wants to help him, and he so often spurns her when she tries to. All this time, she thought he’d finally learned to start accepting help and letting himself be happy. But she really missed the mark this time.

Suddenly she’s aware of the Doctor dropping to her level, crouching beside her.

“Are you…” he begins.

She doesn’t turn towards him, looking instead towards the sea, letting the wind dry the forthcoming tears filling in her eyes before they can be shed. Now isn’t the time to reveal the cracks in her armor.

But he lets whatever the thought was die on his lips. She’ll never know how that sentence was going to end, either.

“Let’s go,” she commands quietly, barely audible over the sound of the waves and the sand, and gets to her feet, limbs heavy.

Where?

The Doctor. He’s always been the only destination, the only direction her heart’s compass ever points, the only coordinates she ever enters into her mental GPS. She’s trained her mind to ensure that it is for years. She has to get back to him. That’s just it. It’s either find him, or face a life away from her true home stuck with a copy of the man she loves, who’s caged just as much as she is without a ship to travel time and space in. That’s not a happily ever after, that’s a twisted nightmare.

She doesn’t look back as she trudges her way to her mother, expending most of her effort to ensure the only emotion left on her face is shock. It’s okay to feel shock, right? None of them could have seen this coming.

She doesn’t look back at him, but her foolish brain betrays her and fashions an image of him anyway, crouching there awkwardly facing the sea, his neck craned as he watches her walk away. Guilt tugs her conscience at the unbidden image, but even when she squeezes her eyes shut and screams for it to leave her alone, it doesn’t go away.

She doesn’t look back.

Her mum does.

There is no mistaking the sadness and disappointment in her mother’s eyes as Rose approaches, as she looks over Rose’s shoulder at the Doctor. The other Doctor. The human Doctor. In the security of her mind, it doesn’t feel quite right to unambiguously bestow an unmodified title to him. Like he’s the only one, like he’s replacing the original. Memories resurface with the thought, of how loath she was to call the smiling, mental, skinny bloke crashing the TARDIS and drowning in a leather jacket the Doctor. That had of course been temporary, and she had come to reminisce on that time with fondness of his new bubbly spirit and tenacity to persuade her to accept him. Perhaps this would be too. And this Doctor looks the same. Mostly.

“Let’s go,” she repeats to her mother, pausing briefly when she’s within earshot and gesturing away from the shore.

“Where to?” her mum asks, echoing her muted tone, still glancing between her and where she guesses the Doctor is standing. Or walking. She still isn’t looking.

“Well, neither of us has a phone. We’ve got to call dad. Have ‘im pick us up.”

Thinking on her feet. One thing she’s learned to do brilliantly since working for Torchwood. It’s true, they do have to get to a phone. Transdimensional teleportation devices are a bit of a death sentence to conventional electronics, she’d learned the hard way. Inconvenient, but nothing insurmountable.

“Are you all righ’, sweetheart?” Her mum extends a hand to her shoulder, but she pulls away.

“Yeah.”

She starts walking towards the road.

The familiar rock formations and drab, damp sand crunching under her feet dredge up precisely the memories she’s been trying to avoid. Dread twists in her stomach as she drags her shoes through the thick stuff with futile attempts to clear the flashbacks from her mind. Just like the first time, the beach is devoid of life, her hands feel painfully empty clenched hopelessly against her stomach, whispers taunt her from several feet behind, and all she can think about is finding her way back to a man in a brown pinstriped suit. It’s too familiar. She wants to be sick. Or scream. Or both. For some valve to relieve the pressure of traumatic emotion building up inside her, some way for it to manifest physically before she explodes.

No. She _has_ to stay strong.

She found her way back once, and she’ll do it again. He said the walls were closing again, for good, and she knew they would. It couldn’t have been a coincidence the cannon suddenly started working when for months it only failed. But he’s been known to be dramatic. To stretch the truth where it suits his interests. Her window to get back may not have passed yet. She may still have a lot more time than the matter of minutes he implied in his rush to leave. The walls can’t have ripped apart instantly; it must have taken time for them to crumble enough for her to get through. Following this logic, it will take time for them to be rebuilt as well.

And then, there’s always time travel. She knows there’s a black market for it in this universe, and though it isn’t without its risks, she almost resorted to it towards the end, when her last hopes for the cannon were dwindling. If Jack could do it back home, she can find a way. As a last resort. There may still be time left to make it back before she has to.

With this new goal, her head becomes startlingly clear. The clouds of doom dissipate from over her head, the nasty memories pull further out to sea rather than crashing over her, and she can breathe again. Her next mission has been established: back to Torchwood, and stat.

First task in this mission: get to a phone.

With that singular focus occupying her thoughts, it’s easier for her to turn around and ensure the other two are following. Just as she imagined, her mum is talking with the man in blue in hushed tones. She’s gesturing with worry creasing her forehead as she stares him down, and he’s stony-faced as he kicks up sand and reluctantly answers her questions. Most words are too difficult to make out, but she can hear her name clearly in the short time she dedicates to listening for it.

Tuning out the sound, she turns away from them and speeds up her gait. The closest establishment with a telephone is the hotel a mile up the coast.

Rather than consider the possibility that she’ll be too late, or surrender to the persistent, vivid memories of kissing the Doctor in blue a few minutes ago, or even entertain the ridiculous notion that they’re truly stuck here, she focuses on what she’s going to say to Dad and Jake, once she gets a hold of them.

Dad, she probably can’t let on to. She’ll have to drop a few white lies, convince him all is well and their battles are over and they’re just dying to get home because they’re exhausted. Only problem she can see arising there is that he never expected her to come home, if she ever did find a way back to the Doctor. Both parents knew the deal. She’d made her choice a long time ago, and they weren’t going to stand in the way this time, not after they’d both seen what losing him had done to her. She had always tried to convince them to come with, if she ever did make it back, but they’d always insisted they couldn’t leave the life they’d built here. (As a result, she had always planned on dragging them to their home universe anyway, bribing them with the TARDIS and the Doctor’s ability to pull strings to get them properly situated.) The bottom line is that her father understands quite well that she never thought she’d be sticking around in this universe if she found a way to stay with the Doctor.

Probably shouldn’t even mention the new one on the phone. That’s a story she doesn’t have the emotional stamina to tell right now.

Before she can consider what she’ll tell Jake, her mum jogs her way up the street to catch up with her, grabbing her by the elbow to slow down her furious fast-walking.

“Rose, talk to me,” she pleads. She knows that voice too well: it’s her anxious voice.

“What, mum,” she sighs, indulging her enough to slow down slightly and glance in her direction.

“Are you cross with me?”

That sobers her a bit.

“Of course not.”

“Are you cross with ‘im?” she nods behind them.

“No,” she snaps, but second guesses herself. “I don’t know.”

“You won’t even look at ‘im,” she accuses.

She glances back where her mother just did, purely to make a point, but immediately regrets it when she finds him staring back and they share a brief moment of eye contact. Caught off guard, he does a poor job of hiding his sense of betrayal, and she doesn’t bother to veil the anger hardening her jaw and creasing her brow.

Her mum doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm, but she breathes through the instinct to scold.

“He said he’d spend his life with you. I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy!?” she bites back. She doesn’t need this right now, one more person to try to dictate what will make her happy without consulting her. “He left, mum. Without saying goodbye, without asking what I wanted. He _left_ me here. _Again_.” She doesn’t even care if the other Doctor is listening, or that she’s talking loudly enough that he can overhear even if he isn’t. He’s partially at fault for this, and he can never convince her otherwise.

“But this one stayed,” she counters, confused. “Doesn’t that mean somethin’?”

She grinds her teeth together.

“Yeah,” she grumbles reluctantly. “But mum… you of all people.” She shakes her head, squeezing her arms more tightly over her abdomen to keep from throttling her.

“Not the same, then, is he?” she guesses.

She doesn’t respond, not wanting him to overhear something so cruelly definitive.

 “He’s not a parallel Doctor though, love. He hasn’t got a different life that you aren’t in. He knows you.” She sighs wistfully. “And he....”

Even though she doesn’t finish the sentence, Rose’s lip twitches as she glowers over at her mother. Like she doesn’t already know that. The soft words echo in her head at her mum’s reminder, and her heart swells at the memory even now. She waited so long to hear it, had built up the moment for so long in her dreams, and it sounded so beautiful. She could taste the word on his tongue as he said it; he savored it the same way he did her name. The urge to run back and snog him again surges inside her chest, her lips tickle with the craving for another taste. But she crams it down before it makes her lose focus. That would not be a productive solution.

“I know,” she admits. “But I can’t just leave ‘im.” Her voice cracks, and she cuts herself off to rein in her emotions. It doesn’t mean she ever would have left the other Doctor if she had a choice in the matter. She didn’t want to leave either of them. Hoping her mother knows what she meant, she resolves to stay silent, lest she risk escaping tears she doesn’t want either of them to see.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

She nods curtly, still looking straight ahead. Avoids blinking so any fresh moisture in her eyes dries up quickly. She loses count of how many of their long strides pass before her mum says anything more.

“You should talk to ‘im. Tell ‘im how you feel. Maybe he can help.”

She closes her eyes and fights back the frustration and the urge to yell. She doesn’t want to take any of this out on her mum. She’s less responsible for any of this than herself, even. If she hadn’t gone and kissed the metacrisis, the other Doctor never would have been able to slip away. She could’ve used some motherly level-headedness fifteen minutes ago.

“I know you never wanted to come back here. I know how much you missed ‘im. And the travelin’. And I know I can’t help. But I think he can.”

“Not now, mum,” she lashes out.

Jackie flinches next to her.

“I’m sorry,” she appends quickly, reaching over to touch her mum on the arm. “I just… can’t right now, yeah? I just want to get home.”

Her mum still looks too concerned to possibly drop it, but with a somber nod, she does anyway. Bless her.

With her breakneck pace, only a few more minutes of nothing but the sound of shoes on asphalt pass before the outskirts of the town comes into into view around a bend of jagged rock.

Assorted, colorful buildings wrap around the bay, yachts rest stately in docks scattered across the shore. Closest to them is the familiar, sprawling modern architecture of the five-star hotel situated on the water, a large sign tempting passersby to investigate the overpriced hospitality.

_Harbour Brygge & Hotell_

Beyond the heavy, gold-plated glass doors, the interior thrives with the quiet bustle of the upper class. Soft piano music filters through the room from invisible ceiling speakers, wine glasses and silverware clink from the nearby banquet hall, and hushed conversation in the spacious, marble-adorned lounge. Among the staff, the only attire to be seen are tuxedos and three-piece skirt suits, and among the guests are more tailored suits and sparkling dresses. As she shuffles in her trainers and common trousers towards the front desk, the environment feels as horrendously out of step with her mental state as the first time she stepped inside. The untroubled aura of peace and enjoyment glaringly conflicts with the storm of dread brewing in her mind.

The first time, they had piled back into the Jeep and opted for much cheaper lodging down the road a few miles. But she can’t mentally hibernate and run out this time.

Mum and the Doctor linger a few feet behind her as she approaches the hulking dark wood and white marble desk. She can’t help but overhear the stuffy complaints in a foreign tongue, seemingly about luggage or the ocean, maybe both, from the patrons already standing there. Their petty objections unnerve her further. Standing here in trousers and an old jacket, hair a mess from the wind, and what can’t be anything better than rehearsed stoicism on her face, she’s never felt so out of place (and she’s visited countless alien planets). That, and she’d like to slap these rich arseholes to give them a sense of perspective. But they need a phone, so she keeps her hands securely against her sides.

A businessman departs from the desk, already dialing into his mobile as he snaps his fingers at a bellhop to take his luggage, and the redheaded woman behind it calls to her in the same unfamiliar language. She asks her a question that she doesn’t remotely understand.

Once she greets the woman with a tentative ‘hello’, hoping she won’t need a translator, and the woman rephrases her question in broken English.

“How may I help you?”

“Hi, can I borrow a phone, please?”

“My apologies, miss, the phone is for guests of the hotel only.”

“Please, ma’am, we’ve lost ours and just need to phone for a taxi.”

“I am sorry, but –”

The Doctor, who had been previously hung back and yielded her the control, steps up to the counter and leans over it to break his vow of silence.

“I’m sorry, what was your name?” he asks, the most genuine smile she’s seen on this Doctor’s face since they stepped out of the TARDIS.

“Stina,” she answers, narrowing her eyes.

“Stina,” he repeats. “Lovely name. Listen, Stina, we’re in a bit of a pickle. Our trip went a bit pear-shaped and my mother-in-law got a nasty bit of food poisoning.” He lowers his voice as he gestures back to her mum. “We’ve got to get back home, or I’m afraid she’ll be spending the next several hours in one of your toilets.” He raises his eyebrows expectantly, and Stina looks back at her mum with worried creases in her forehead. “What d’you say, can you help us out?”

With a sigh, she picks up her own receiver from the lower desk next to her computer, sets it up on the counter he’s leaning on, numbers facing out, picks up the phone and holds it out for him.

“Thank you, Stina.” He clicks his tongue with a wink in her direction before turning towards her and passing her the phone.

She stands in shock for a moment, staring after him as he walks away to rejoin her ‘ill’ mother, unsettled by how very much like the original Doctor he sounded in that exchange, vibrant and persuasive and as entertained by names as he ever was.

“Miss?”

“Yeah.” She shakes her head and narrows her attention back to remembering the numbers she needs to dial. Memorized them ages ago, since pickups from remote locations wasn’t exactly rare since they started testing the cannon.

She dials in Pete’s number, and he picks up before the second ring finishes.

“’lo?” he rushes out from the other end, exasperated.

“Dad?”

“Oh, my God, Rose.” He breathes out a sigh of relief, and she can almost see the way his shoulders relax and the creases smooth out of his forehead as he runs a hand through what little hair he has left. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”

“Yeah, dad, we’re good. Mum’s ‘ere too. Listen, we need a ride back home. Can you send someone?”

“Where are you?” he asks.

“Bad Wolf Bay. That hotel we walked in last time, the posh one we couldn’t afford.”

“What are you doing back there?”

“Long story, Dad, can you send a plane?”

“A plane?” he questions. “Can’t you get on a zeppelin from Bergen?”

“’s too slow.” She shakes her head resolutely. “We’ve got to get home. I’ve got to get back to Torchwood, you know, fill everyone in.”

“Okay, okay. Uhm…” There’s some shuffling on the other end, and he blows air out through his mouth. “I’ll make some calls. Get you out of Bergen within the hour. They should have something ready.”

“Thanks, dad.”

“You have money for a taxi?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I talk to your mum?”

“Later.”

“Rose, I’ve been worried sick. She ran off without tellin’me.”

“I’ll have her call you when we get to the airport.”

He grumbles audibly.

“Fine. Tell her she’s in a spot of trouble with me. And her son.”

“Will do.”

She pushes down on the receiver with one finger, and asks the woman for a number for a local taxi company.

She hands her a business card with the name of a company she doesn’t bother reading and a number, and she dials immediately.

She gives the bloke on the line the name of the hotel, and he recognizes it and promises to arrive within five minutes.

Just enough time for one more call. With Stina preoccupied with a new guest, she discreetly presses the receiver one more time and punches in Jake’s mobile.

“Who’s ‘is?” he barks as soon as he picks up.

“Jake, ‘s me.”

“Rose!? Bloody hell, thought I might never see you again! Is it all sorted? How – what’re you doin’? What about the Doctor?” He always starts talking far too fast when he gets anxious.

“I’m fine. The Doctor is fine. We did it. There’s just…” she hesitates. She hates lying to him, or anyone else on the team. “One more thing I’ve got to do. I didn’t mean to come back so soon.” She glances back, to find her mum and the Doctor seated awkwardly far apart on the nearest couch, well out of earshot. Still, she plays it safe. “Can you get the cannon ready? I’m on my way, but I’m in Norway it’ll take a few hours.”

“You got it. See you soon.”

“Ta, Jake.”

She sets the phone back in the receiver and whirls around. Bless Jake. They’ve built up enough mutual trust that he doesn’t need to ask questions or challenge her motives for anything. She gives the word; he gets it done. And doesn’t slow anything down with chatter until they have the free time for it. He’ll ask how she’s doing and what’s happened once the dust settles, never a moment sooner.

The calls taken care of, she’s much more confident as she approaches the other two.

“Ride will be here in just a couple of minutes, we should wait outside.” The way she says it it sounds almost rehearsed. But not in the vein of an actor delivering a line, more in the style of a nervous high schooler reciting a line of Shakespeare they memorized. She hasn’t sounded this lifeless in years.

She heads for the door, assuming they’ll follow.

“Uhm… where’re we going?” the Doctor asks, strolling up beside her. He doesn’t move to touch her, and there’s almost too much nonchalance in the way he asks, like he’s trying to cover something up. Well, that makes two of them.

“Airport.”

The Doctor nods, but hangs back when they reach the door, apparently not wanting to risk taking even this smidgeon of autonomy from her, and she pushes the heavy glass thing open, propping it with her foot. “Dad’s having us picked up, ‘s the fastest way to get home.”

“Zeppelin?” he asks with a mildly curious head tilt.

“Too slow. We’re getting a jet.”

“Brilliant.” He smirks.

“What’s the rush?” her mother asks, crossing her arms.

“Don’t you want to get home?” she counters with another question, dodging eye contact. “’Sides, I’ve got to get back to Torchwood. Everyone’s got to be filled in on what happened. Know that I’m back.” She stares down the empty stretch of road, scanning for any vehicle resembling a taxi on the perpendicular street that might be turning this way soon.

“All righ’, fair enough,” her mum concedes, staring out at the road with her. Rose glances over at the Doctor, though, and there’s no mistaking the suspicion in his eyes.

He can calm down. He’s coming with, after all. He’d be useless stuck here.

“I wasn’t sure if they still had airplanes in this universe,” he muses as they pile into the backseat of the taxi. “Makes sense though. A giant blimp is hardly an efficient means of long distance air travel.”

“It’s as slow as a horse-drawn carriage,” her mum adds. “They’re mostly for leisure. And for surveillance. News recordings, business parties, all that.”

The drive to the airport is only about half an hour, but with no objective in between getting inside and getting out, her mind starts to wander back to the beach. To _does it need saying_ and the last image of the fading TARDIS and an ill-advised but very enjoyable kiss. Tears well up in her eyes that she crudely soaks up with her thumb and index finger as she stares out the window at the cars and landmarks racing by. What if she doesn’t make it?

_Stop_ , she scolds herself. That kind of talk is no good. She’ll make it. The Doctor has made a huge mistake. He may not realize it yet, but he will in time, and she wants to be there before he does.

“So a stop at Torchwood, eh?” the Doctor interrupts her contemplation. “I’ll finally get to meet the whole team that calls Rose Tyler their boss?”

“Mmhm,” she mumbles, hoping he can’t hear the lump in her throat.

Over the next few minutes, he makes a few more attempts at conversation, but she can’t find the strength to humor him. Once he eventually he gives up, silence swathes the interior of the taxi once more, and the wind hitting the windows and the friction of rubber on asphalt becomes calming white noise. If it’s tense or awkward, she doesn’t notice, too consumed with her own single-minded determination not to think about the beach or any potential future where she doesn’t make it back home in time to catch her Doctor before he’s locked away forever.

She’s much better once she has tasks to complete once more.

Find a phone.

Call Dad.

Speak with personnel.

Get to the right private terminal.

She does it all on autopilot, shutting down all parts of her brain that aren’t relevant to each particular task, and it all passes in a blur. Before she realizes it, engines are roaring and shrieking around her ears, traffic controllers are shouting and waving sticks a few meters away as the three of them climb the steps of their aircraft.

They buckle into the accommodating, jet-black leather seats, the Doctor across the spacious aisle, her mother in front of her, and she settles into her chair and tries to prepare herself for an hour and a half of staring down at clouds.

“Think they’ve got any peanuts on board?” the blue-suited Doctor asks excitedly as they wait to pull out of the terminal, shifting in his seat and glancing up and down the short aisle in search of refreshment.

This isn’t a commercial flight. He should know as well as she does there isn’t going to be a flight attendant strutting down the aisle with a snack cart taking beverage orders. Torchwood doesn’t equip unnecessary bells and whistles on flights that are strictly for business: just the bare bones two pilots.

“Don’t think so,” she responds dully, not bothering to look over at him.

“Haven’t been on a plane in _years_ ,” he goes on, unperturbed. “Decades, I think. The only time I’ve ever needed to is when I’ve been separated from the TARDIS.”

She recoils slightly at the unexpected mention, the throbbing reminder of how much time is being wasted on inefficient travel, as her brain dredges up fresh images of the browns and blues of her Doctor and his time ship waiting for her across the void. Every second may count, and she’s stuck sitting on her arse, staring uselessly out a cabin window while she puts her and the Doctor’s fate in the hands of the two strangers piloting their jet.

He’s quiet as they taxi down the runway and during takeoff, and doesn’t start up conversation again until the pilot signals it’s okay to disengage seatbelts.

“Not so long since I’ve been on public transport in general, though.” He bounces the balls of his feet on the floor. “Remember that train we got stuck on in the Ryu sector?” She can see him smiling out of the corner of her eye, but she can’t bear to look at it head-on.

How could she have forgotten that?

She won’t be able to take an hour and a half of this. Acquiescing to small talk and reminiscing like her entire world isn’t on the brink of caving in, the only morsel of light in this dark cavern the chance of getting back before it’s too late. Listening to him is like watching a live video of a concert you couldn’t go to recorded from your friend’s mobile. A cruel reminder of what you’re missing when all you want to do is distract yourself from it. At least until she can fix it. Get back what’s been lost.

If there were a faster means of travel, she would be on it, she tries to remind herself. This is the quickest way to get to London. The quickest way to Torchwood base. To the cannon. To the Doctor.

“Yeah,” she manages finally, with the weakest smile she thinks she’s ever given him in any incarnation.

“How fast are planes flying in 2008 in Pete’s World?” he asks, either completely oblivious or pretending not to be bothered that she isn’t in a conversational mood.

“It’s 2009,” she corrects him, rather than responding to anything else. The timelines aren’t perfectly matched up; they never have been.

“Is it?” he asks in a squeaky voice. “Fascinating. Have the timelines always been skewed?” When she doesn’t answer, he postulates for himself. “S’pose that explains how months went by for you by the time I found a way to… well. I assumed the dates matched up when I chose a day to send the signal…”

She just shrugs with a cursory glance in his direction.

Finally, though, there’s a crack in his veneer of nonchalance, and he sighs heavily.

“Rose, can you please at least look at me.” He doesn’t phrase it as a question.

She admits to herself reluctantly that he at least deserves that respect. When she finally meets his eyes for longer than a fraction of a second, his are imploring her for answers.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she insists emphatically, not breaking eye contact.

Little frustrated creases form in his forehead, and one corner of his mouth pulls down into a frown, disappointed. With a deep breath, he wrests open his seatbelt, turns in his chair, legs hanging into the aisle, and reaches his hand across the gap to rest on her exposed arm. She immediately tenses but doesn’t let it manifest physically, resolving to wait to see what important thing he has to say now.

“Rose, talk to me,” he pleads in barely above a whisper, an attempt to give them privacy from her mother hardly two feet away, squeezing her arm lightly. “Please.” His big brown eyes widen, trying to persuade her, and with a few more seconds she might have been convinced. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

For some reason, that request sends her over the edge.

She slowly pulls her arm away and turns her gaze to the back of her mum’s chair. She can’t outright deny his request verbally, but neither can she indulge it. He didn’t ask what she was thinking on that beach; he isn’t allowed to ask now. It isn’t fair.

It’s harsh, and she knows it. But she couldn’t take it anymore. She needs time to process, to plan, without having to fabricate a façade and keep herself talking. It’s too mentally draining.

The Doctor makes no further attempts to interact with her for the duration of the flight.

And she absolutely does not check on him. She happens to glance over a few times, maybe, but she doesn’t purposefully look over to him with the intention of gauging how he’s doing. But on the few occasions she does happen to glance his way, half the times he’s staring at her, face pale with fear and worry, lips slightly parted like he’s about to say something but the words are caught in his throat. The other half, he’s staring out his window, the side of his face she can see contorted with such despair that for a split second she considers crossing the aisle to console him.

She physically shakes that idea from her head. _Her_ consoling _him_. The very idea is ludicrous. He’s offering her no words of consolation or remorse, sitting over there silently, given up without a fight… she doesn’t see how he could deserve any from her.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fourteen months later...
> 
> I know. Frankly, I'm as surprised as you are. If not more.
> 
> I really /did/ want to update ep before surgery, but the muse was calling me back here. And I kinda had to listen to it. Pointless to fight against its current, I've learned. EP is next on the list, promise. Though it may have to wait until after surgery now. We'll see.
> 
> Anyway, yeah. I did not expect this as all. But as devastating and gut-wrenching as this story is, I'm glad to be back. It's so, so important for me to tell this story. I think it is helping me to find the closure I need. I just... happened to need a year long break from it to let the wounds heal. And while they were, I got to indulge my fantasies (via EP). Lol. 
> 
> I desperately hope it isn't another 14 months before I update again. But I definitely understand if many of you don't want to continue reading as I go because I've been so record-breakingly slow with this. Though I hope you'll stay with me.
> 
> But to those of you who do wish to stay, thank you. Sincerely! And also, I apologize that you'll probably have to re-read the entire thing for this to make any sense. I definitely had to twice. And also, I apologize again, because the pain isn't really letting up anytime soon.
> 
> <333

After ten lifetimes of getting anywhere he wants to go with the flip of a switch, the Doctor has always been averse to using even the fastest human transportation methods. As fascinated as he is by the flying contraptions humans call airplanes, he’d never voluntarily take one if a quicker option were available. And this flight, he can feel the slowness of their transportation more than ever. Distant clouds crawl by as though in slow motion. Staring down at the Earth (sometimes the sea) miles below, it’s hardly evident they’re moving at all. As long as he’s watching it, the view always looks the same. It’s only when he turns his gaze away from the window for long enough that he detects any change in the scenery beneath.

And yet, looking away from the window makes the flight seem longer still. He can’t bear to look at Rose across the aisle, resolutely ignoring him, nor Jackie and her piteous glances. There aren’t many places left to look. His blue suit and trainers that only remind him of the life he’s just left behind. He often resigns himself to staring at the back of the empty seat in front of him, searching for scraps of hope on a folded plastic tray.

The passage of time doesn’t automatically quantify itself to him in precise units as it usually does, and he’s increasingly unsettled by it. By the time the seatbelt light dings off, he’s counting the seconds as they drag by. One tiny way to make himself feel a little less powerless, a little more like his former, wholly Time Lord self.

Two thousand five hundred twenty-nine seconds have passed when the Doctor realizes their descent is reaching its end.

It’s only then that the speed of the aircraft suddenly catches up with him. It happened gradually enough that he hadn’t noticed, but this close to the ground, the view outside his tiny window is no longer static. The scenery races past the windows dizzyingly and it suddenly mirrors how quickly everything has spun out of control. Skyscrapers and motorways and landmarks loom closer and closer until it feels like any second they’ll collide with one, and it only serves to remind him that his life, too, is about to crash and burn. Whether in a tailspin and a ball of fire or not, they’re going to hit the ground, and soon. And when they do, he’s going to be properly, permanently stuck on the unfamiliar Earth they’re hurtling towards, with someone who may very well resent his very existence.

Time Lords don’t experience nausea, but for the first time in his lives, he feels like he’s going to throw up.

This is not the London he knows. Zeppelins compete for airspace, many of the buildings are unfamiliar and the tiny people shuffling below feel like strangers in a way humans in his universe never could.

He chances a glance over at Rose, foolishly hoping it will ground him somehow. He’d happily embrace life in a foreign universe if it meant there was a chance they could be happy together. But she still won’t look at him for longer than a second. Concealing her true emotions behind a well-constructed mask of stoicism, she seems determined to convince him she has more important things to do than reassure him. Important things like getting back to the other universe.

He knows that isn’t possible, but he has a troubling suspicion that she’s going to try anyway. Considering how opposed she is at the moment to the possibility of any sort of relationship with him, she’s taking her circumstances far too well to have already accepted today’s outcome. He can’t help but believe she’s clinging onto a thread of hope. And he doesn’t know what will happen when that thread is cut loose.

Their one shot at a happy life goes out of focus with the city; everything outside the windows blurs until he can no longer make anything out. And it feels like it’s about to slip away forever.

It’s a surprise when the cabin jumps slightly as the jet makes contact with the ground. It’s not at all rough, but it jostles the Doctor more than it should. As the wheels settle onto the asphalt, dread settles into his gut that the rest of the day is going to be even worse than the start. The violent whooshing of air around the wings as the brakes are engaged only reminds him of the TARDIS wheezing its last, and the harsh wind ripping around his ears as Rose let go of his hand.

He’s silent as they taxi down the runway, compulsively wiping sweat from his palms on his trousers. Still unable to muster the courage to ask Rose what’s going to happen when they disembark. After all his attempts at lighthearted conversation backfired, he doesn’t want to imagine what would happen if he attempted to bring up anything related to his fate. Will getting the cold shoulder pale in comparison to the misery still in store for him? He doesn’t know how much more he can take.

As they exit the plane and make their way towards the gate, Rose acts like he’s just another passenger on the plane, rather than someone she’s traveling with. He genuinely doesn’t know whether she wants him to follow her anymore, but he does anyway. Unless she explicitly tells him to stop, he’ll follow her anywhere she goes. Where else does he have to go? She’s the north to his compass. Without her, he’d be immediately, utterly lost. He swallows down a lump in his throat as the three of them walk briskly through the terminal, trying to conceal his fragility from both Rose and the crowd of rushed travelers brushing past him.

They meet up with Pete at baggage claim, and he hugs Jackie with a halfhearted admonishment for running off. But only has a strange, confused look reserved for him and Rose. Like he doesn’t understand why they’re both here. The Doctor moreso than Rose.

“Guess you can, er, explain in the car?” Pete directs the inquiry to Rose, but side-eyes the Doctor.

“Not goin’ with you,” Rose responds curtly, avoiding eye contact with all three of them.  She’s staring out the doors to the street, as though searching for something.

“What d’you mean?” asks Jackie, panic bubbling up in her voice as she glares at her daughter.

“Got to head back to Torchwood.”

Torchwood. Since Rose first mentioned it at that hotel, he’s had a bad feeling about that.

There’s no business to attend to. There can’t be. The entire team had been preoccupied with saving the multiverse, and that mission has been completed. And Pete could easily inform the team members about Rose’s safe return.

“I know,” says Pete, forehead scrunched together in confusion. “I’ll give you a ride. I’ve got to head back, too.”

“No,” Rose insists. “You go with mum. I’ll get a taxi.”

Her sense of urgency and desire to be alone cements his theory. There’s only one reason she’d prioritize heading back to base before anything else.

And it’s impossible.

“Nonsense.” Pete scowls.

Rose glares at him questioningly. Has their relationship been this poor since Rose arrived, or only since this version of himself arrived?

“You’ve got to fill me in,” Pete insists.

“Mum can fill you in. She knows what happened.”

“And what the hell did happen?” Pete is getting properly angry now. Not being in the know is frustrating. The Doctor feels that rather acutely at the moment.

Much to all of their shock, Rose begins to march away from the lot of them.

His stomach drops like an anvil in his gut.

Though _he_ knows her plan won’t work – he can list all thousand reasons why it’s going to fail – it feels like she’s ripped out his single heart and stomped on it. If _she_ believes it will work, and yet doesn’t want him to come along…

He was right before, to question whether he should tell her the other Doctor was leaving. She hadn’t made this choice at all. It had been taken from her, by both of them.

Neither of her parents tries to go after her, and they both look to him for an explanation he doesn’t have. He doesn’t even know whether to follow her. She does not look like she wants to be followed anymore.

But when Rose reaches the door, she’s about to shove it open when she turns around. She’s only about twelve steps away, well within earshot. And she’s looking right at him.

“Come on.” She tilts her head towards the door, indicating he should follow.

For a second, he’s overcome with shock, his eyes going wide as he glances back at her parents. Debating whether he should hold off on obeying her to offer them some explanation. But he takes less than a second to deliberate, because there’s not really a choice at all. Given the two options, he’d never choose anything but going with her as fast as his legs can carry him.

“I’m sorry.” He barely gets the words out before he’s running to meet her.

\---

The taxi ride is just as silent and dreadful as the plane ride, if not more. At least there was only the constant white noise of the engines on the plane. Now there’s radio hosts shouting about politics, honking horns and slamming brakes and the shouted conversations of passersby as they spend most of the trip stuck in traffic. A cacophony that mirrors the chaos in his mind right now. Makes his head hurt.

He’s glad she took him with her. He is. He knows this could have been much worse. He could be stuck at the airport with her parents still, trying to explain who he is without sounding like a lunatic. Trying to explain that he loves Rose with all his heart, but that she doesn’t seem to love him back, without having an emotional breakdown.

He knows this endeavor can only end in disaster. But what is he to do?

Take charge of the situation and force the driver to divert the trip? That would never work. She’d sooner thrash and resist ‘til she was unconscious than do things any other way than her own. Especially not his, given how repulsed she apparently is by him right now.

Provide a pedantic explanation why it won’t work? That’ll only add fuel to the fire of her anger towards him. He has no right to try to tell her what to do, or what not to do. She’s been running the show here for years. She’s far more knowledgeable about the dimension cannon than he is; and she’d only use his attempt to intervene as an opportunity to remind him that.

He could go easier, then, let her down gently and rationally explain that no matter the technology, it’s a plan that’s destined to fail?

He thinks that’s the worst idea of all.

Rose isn’t doing this because she’s certain it will work. He can’t say for sure how confident she actually is, but that isn’t what this is about. She can’t take the other Doctor’s claim – that the walls between universes have already sealed themselves – at face value. He lied through his teeth on that beach. Again and again. What’s one more lie to add to the list? What would stop him from lying about this, when he lied about something as monumental as his love for her?

No, she can’t believe a word he says.

Nor can she trust him, right now, and rightfully so. Every last ounce of her autonomy has been stolen away. Whether she knows that he’s partially to blame or not, right now she needs to be the one in control. She needs to see for herself that the walls have truly closed, and no one, especially not him, will stand in her way.

Nothing he says on the matter will make a difference. The wise choice is to just keep his mouth shut about it.

But assuming she is holding on to the possibility that there is time yet left to escape through the cracks between their universes, why bring him along to watch? Just so she can say goodbye to him? Or maybe so she can abandon him like he abandoned her? An eye for an eye?

She can’t be planning to take him back with her. The other Doctor made it clear he was banishing him here. No universe big enough for two Doctors, it seems. The TARDIS is no longer his. Rose’s heart is still set on the other. There’s nothing left for him to go back to.

It’s only a matter of time before Rose discovers for herself that she’s stuck here, and there’ll be no one there to comfort her but him.

His best case scenario was left in tatters on a Norwegian beach. She didn’t really choose to stay here with him.

Worst case scenario, she resents and abandons him entirely, dimension cannon or not.

That one missing heart… right now he can physically feel it. His chest feels hollow, like a void’s been carved out of it. Hot tears fill his eyes, and his throat aches when he won’t let them fall.

He takes a deep breath, setting his jaw. He can’t let himself break down in front of Rose.

Maybe… maybe there’s a second-best case scenario. What if, upon finding there are no better options left for her, Rose cuts her losses and settles for what she’s been given? The bum end of the deal may be preferable to her than no deal at all. She could compromise for second-best, and let him stay with her after all. And he loves her too much to ever turn down an offer like that, no matter how much pain it will cause him to know he’ll only ever be her alternate. He belongs to her, and nothing she does can ever change that. He will take any scenario if it means he can be with her.

She may always wish she hadn’t been stupid enough to kiss him, and he’ll always wish he still had his second heart. But it will be better than nothing.

His new best case scenario. He clutches onto it like a life belt.

The car finally pulls up to a tall black skyscraper, and the Doctor’s aching heart is in his throat.

“Come on,” Rose rushes out quietly, before practically falling out of her door. Okay. She intends for him to come inside with her, then. She walks briskly towards the looming black glass doors ahead, fidgeting in her pocket, presumably for her ID. His body catches up with his brain after a few agonizing seconds, and he scrambles out his own door and chases after her on wobbly legs. He feels so much more gangly than he ever has. Unstable. Frail.

“Rose,” he calls out to her, and his voice is unexpectedly hoarse. She turns to him, and her eyes are free of tears, her expression is as stony as a previous incarnation of his. None of this has hit her yet.

He clears his throat, and hopes she can’t see the moisture in his eyes.

“Should I wait out here?” he asks, gesturing around the sidewalk. He doesn’t want her to feel forced to drag him around on her leash for everything.

She looks at him strangely, like she can’t believe he would question her authority.

“No,” she responds finally, nodding him along. “Let’s go.”

Somehow, he thought she’d say he should wait out here. That he would be able to miss the worst of it when she realizes this isn’t going to work. It sounds incredibly selfish, to not want to be there for her when she’s going to need it the most. But it’s only because he knows he won’t be the one she wants to see when it all falls apart.

He could stay behind against her orders. It’s unlikely she would physically force him inside, with the sheer number of witnesses wandering the surrounding streets. But he needs to be the better person here, and be there for her regardless if she wants it or not. She deserves that.

So he follows her inside the building, legs even shakier than before.

He doesn’t know what exactly he expected, walking inside the building. He was in this Torchwood before, when he was zapped here against his will at Canary Wharf. But it’s changed substantially since then. It’s renovated. Bright. Professional. Guards are stationed at intervals inside. But unlike on his first visit, the foyer is packed with employees, far too many for it to be normal. A workplace can’t possibly be functional like this. Some are dressed to the nines and others are in trainers and t-shirts, but none are not doing their jobs. They’re roaming about, chatting, huge smiles on their faces. There are liquor bottles and cheers and clinking glasses.

They all know.

Every employee at Torchwood knows the multiverse has been saved, and Rose hasn’t told them yet. The only way they could know that for certain is if the dimension cannon stopped working.

The first person catches sight of Rose, a brown-skinned woman with striking green eyes, and her smile disappears from her face. She looks genuinely shocked to see her. Horrified, even, to see him standing next to her. Shock spreads through the crowd, one or two people at a time. One person elbows another; a gasp draws the attention of a couple more. Slowly, the celebratory clamor quiets into silence until the entire room is staring at them, the anxiety hanging in the air strangling the words from everyone.

“Rose,” someone finally breaks the silence, navigating through the crowd to come and meet her. A young Japanese bloke with gravity-defying hair, no older than thirty, in black slacks and pressed white shirt and black tie. His eyes flicker towards the Doctor, and he quickly assesses him with a few glances from head to toe before lingering on his face. “And the Doctor?”

The Doctor offers a meager wave but keeps his mouth shut, letting Rose steer the conversation.

“Derek,” Rose breathes out, still confused. She glances around, taking in the people and no doubt coming to the same conclusion that he has.

“Jake told us you were coming back,” Derek says. “But why? We thought if the gap between universes closed, you and the Doctor would be on the other side of it.”

“He’s not…” Rose glances over at him, an impassioned rebuttal on the tip of her tongue, but when she meets his eyes, she truncates the sentence.

It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to finish it. He knows exactly how the sentence was going to end.

Something else Derek said registers with Rose.

“Closed…” Rose suddenly focuses on the word, repeating it mechanically. “How d’you…” She sways on her feet as she processes the concept, confused all while looking as though she’s about to faint. “How d’you know that?”

He looks around, hoping for backup from some of the other employees. But none seem brave enough to join the conversation. Perhaps Derek is more of a confidante than the others; a friend outside work or a colleague she works in closer contact with than everyone else.

“The dimension cannon, it’s bricked.” Derek says it as though she should already know. The Doctor is unfamiliar with this particular slang term, but he assumes it means dead. Kaput.

Rose’s bottom lip quivers for the first time, and she takes in a jagged breath. She bends at the waist, supporting herself with her hands on her knees for a couple seconds before she gains some measure of control.

She shakes her head, and a single tear escapes from one of her eyes. A mere taste of what’s to come that nearly breaks the Doctor apart. “Where’s Jake?” she asks, a desperate plea that no one in their right mind would refuse to answer truthfully.

“G-level. Same as always.”

Derek hardly gets the sentence out before Rose is bolting away from them. She doesn’t need to shove her way through the crowd; they scramble out of her way proactively.

The Doctor runs after her through the path she’s left in her wake, but he’s not fast enough. Rose escapes into a waiting lift and mashes a button. She watches him approach as the door start to close, but doesn’t hold it open for him. He just barely discerns her stoic façade start to shatter through what thin gap remains, and he reaches his arm out, intending to stop it by force. But then, with a crash, he slams into the metal a second too late.

The Doctor is suddenly murderously angry. He’s just given up _everything_ for her, and he still has to chase after her. And even when he chases, he somehow still falls short. On impulse, he smashes his fist into the door. But it only sends sharp, stabbing pain through his knuckles and does not even make a dent in the metal. He cradles his hand against his chest, growling, but the persistent throbbing in his fingers only makes his fury melt quickly and pathetically into grief.

Rose hasn’t once asked him how he’s feeling, ripped away from his home universe, everyone he ever knew, the only real telepathic connection he had left in the TARDIS abruptly severed. The only person in this bloody universe who has the slightest chance of caring about him, and she hasn’t shown him the slightest morsel of concern. He feels betrayed, and fiercely, achingly alone. He wants to curl up on the ground and let himself mourn and come to terms with all he’s lost.

But loath as he is to admit it, he’s the reason she’s here at all. He was complicit in the scheme to trap her here. And if he didn’t exist, she’d still be with the version of him she’d rather be with. He can’t abandon her or lash out at her, not ever. He has to comfort her, even if there’s no one to comfort him. Even though he needs it more now than he ever has in his lives.

He has to suck it up. Glancing around, he finds a door leading to a stairwell not far from the lift, and heads straight for it. He swings open the door so hard it hits the wall, but the boom that echoes through the stairs barely registers. He takes the first few steps two at a time, intending to race up to wherever G level is, when a shout echoes from behind him somewhere.

“Down, mate!” Some bloke. “G-level is seventh below ground.”

“Ta,” he calls back as he swivels around and leaps all eight steps to the bottom.

He races his way down fourteen long flights of stairs, stumbling a few times but using the rail to steady himself. He doesn’t know how to prepare for whatever he may be about to encounter when he finds her, but he knows it won’t be good. He focuses on the stairs instead, but then only starts to feel dizzy from spiraling down in so many circles. Down, left, down, left, down, left…

There’s finally a door with a gray sign labeled “G” next to it, but when he tries to yank it open, it’s locked. He shouts at the door, kicking it. His anger rushes back with a vengeance. No matter what he does, it’s wrong. The universe will just never let him win.

But suddenly, he remembers he’d nicked the sonic screwdriver before he’d left the TARDIS. Rummaging it out of his jacket pocket, he aims it at the lock and it disengages.

As soon as he’s through the door, he hears Rose and Jake from somewhere out of sight.

“Rose! It’s dead!” Jake yells. The Doctor evidently missed how this began.  “Can’t get nothin’ from it.”

“Why didn’t you say before!” Rose yells back. Someone kicks something metal.

“It wasn’t until after I talked to you that I found out!”

The Doctor is in a small command center filled with white cubicles and white walls. It’s completely empty, but the scattered belongings on the desks suggest it was vacated in a hurry. Just up ahead there’s a corner with a hallway that leads to the right, the voices are coming from there. He cautiously makes his way towards it.

“I would’ve called and told you, Rose,” Jake adds, a little softer. “But you didn’t have your phone.”

“You coulda told my dad!”

“I did tell ‘im!”

“Well, he didn’t say anythin’!”

There’s a pause, and the Doctor stops walking, for fear his footsteps will be heard without the shouting to drown them out. He isn’t ready to reveal himself yet.

“Well I dunno why!” Jake doesn’t deserve to bear the brunt of her anger; but he takes it anyway. “Rose, what the hell are you doin’ back here?”

Rose doesn’t answer with words, but he hears a few sniffles that indicate she’s losing her composure.

“It can’t be dead! IT CAN’T!” There’s the sound of keystrokes and throwing switches, a few mechanical whirs and beeps.

“It IS, Rose. I’ve tried. We all have. It’s just like before.”

“I have to get back!”

“You CAN’T Rose! You can’t get through anymore!” There’s a few scuffling sounds, and the Doctor wonders if Jake has had to resort to physically restraining her from damaging equipment.

There’s a moment of heavy silence before gut-wrenching sound of Rose starting to cry.

“Rose.” Jake sounds as devastated to see her cry as he is to hear it. “We knew the walls would close again,” he says, quietly. “Why were you on this side when they did?” He sounds genuinely baffled.

The Doctor has reached the corridor, but lingers just at the corner, leaning his head back against the wall. It’s stupid of him, but he wants to hear what Rose says.

“Why didn’t you stay with the Doctor?” Jake adds, when Rose doesn’t respond right away.

Whether it kills him or not, the Doctor needs to know the truth.

“It wasn’t up to me.” The words leave her lips with a sob.

“What, he forced you to stay here?”

Rose doesn’t answer the question verbally; he can only presume she nodded.

“The Doctor, he’s” she’s interrupted by gasps of breath – “back in the other universe. But there’s another one, he’s – here – he’s in the buildin’.”

“Another one?” he asks. If it’s possible, even more confused.

Rose heaves a few times before she can answer.

“It’s so fucked up, Jake.”

There’ll be no more conversation for the moment. Rose is properly sobbing now. Jake seems to understand this, because he doesn’t ask any more questions.

The Doctor is frozen where he stands, his feet feel weighted to the floor. His head is throbbing and he wishes he were alone someplace with a locked door so he could sob too.

_Fucked up._ That’s what this is to Rose. His offer of a lifetime devoted to her is fucked up.

Well. It’s fucked up for him, too. Even more so.

He’s lost everything. Everything. And the woman he loves sees him as a counterfeit.

He wants to be sick. Or better, to leave and never come back. Maybe he can find a way to rip a hole in the universe himself so she can go back to the other him. If he died in the process, it would be a blessing. His pitiful human life wouldn’t be worth living without her in it.

But he can’t do any of that.

He promised her: together. He won’t be the one to give up. To run away. He’s in this ‘til the end. It’s up to him now to convince her he’s the real deal. Maybe, if he works hard enough to prove he’s the Doctor she loves, she’ll let go of her regret. It’s really his only hope to make her happy now.

Taking a slow, deep breath to gather his courage, he steps out from behind the wall.

Rose’s is crumpled on the floor, her back to him, next to what he assumes is the dimension cannon. It resembles a teleportation device. Jake is kneeling beside her, rubbing her shoulder with one hand, and he looks like he has no idea what else to do. She’s let her head come to rest on his chest and grabbed hold of his shirt, grasping at any threads of comfort she can get.

It stirs something in him, seeing another bloke holding her like that, even if it’s strictly platonic. Something that makes his cheeks hot and his injured fist clench with a fresh stab of pain. He’s the one who should be comforting her, the only one who should be able to in times like these. But he lost that privilege when he got her trapped here the first time; of course she found others she could find solace in. Anyone would.

And in large part, he’s the reason she’s hurting right now. He has no right to be jealous at all.

But that won’t stop him. Despite all she’s done and said to hurt him since the TARDIS vanished, he still desperately wants to be by her side. And he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to be.

Jake turns his head just slightly, catching sight of him in his periphery. His hold on Rose relaxes upon seeing him there, and his eyes go wide, jaw dropping open slightly.

He doesn’t speak, for fear of upsetting Rose, but asks him a question silently with his eyes.

_Are you him, or not?_

The Doctor wracks his brain for a way to demonstrate to Jake that he can be trusted. Based on what Rose has told him so far, he probably thinks him to be something either inconsequential – a clone or a hologram perhaps – or a threat. A convincing robot or malevolent alien impostor. This is Torchwood, after all.

He remembers something he said to Jake, back when he and Rose were in this parallel universe the first time, confronting the Cybermen together.

“Good to see you,” he greets him somberly. Still, Rose hears him, and she breaks free of Jake’s grasp enough that she can turn and confirm the source of the sound. Seeing him, she gets awkwardly to her feet and wipes roughly at her eyes with her sleeves. With a valiant effort, she reverts back to her stoic demeanor. The only things giving her away are the redness around her eyes and a few wet spots she missed. Jake stands up with her, and the Doctor takes a few hesitant steps towards them. “Jakey-boy,” he adds. It sounds empty and lifeless coming from his mouth, but he hopes Jake will remember.

Hearing this nickname, Jake looks surprised, but pleasantly so. He immediately seems to perceive the Doctor with less suspicion. His eyes dart between him and Rose, looking confused as to why she’s upset now that he can see him in the flesh and he seems authentic enough. Jake simply doesn’t yet understand that to Rose, that authenticity is evidently only skin-deep. Likely, no one will understand without hearing the full story. And if Rose doesn’t want to tell it yet, he’s not going sidestep her authority and tell it on her behalf.

“How’d you get down here?” Rose asks, like he’s a civilian who wandered into a restricted area. Her clear, authoritative tone completely belies her emotional distress.

“The stairs,” he says, direct and somewhat defensive.

Rose pulls away from Jake and leans over a countertop with a computer, presumably the one that controls the cannon, and wipes her face more thoroughly.

“You can go back up them, then,” she commands, without looking over at him. “I just have a few things to take care of down here.” She glances over at the cannon, somehow still sounding defiant.

He doesn’t want her to have to cling onto false hope for any longer. As painful as this is going to be, he’d rather just rip the plaster off in one go.

“Jake is right, Rose. It’s never going to work again.”

Rose shakes her head, but her mask falters, her lips quiver. Suddenly she turns to him, realizing he must have overheard their conversation to know what Jake said. But she doesn’t look remorseful for what she said.

“How much did you hear?” she asks.

He clenches his jaw, debating for a moment whether to lie.

“Enough.”

Suddenly her sorrow manifests as anger.

“Well what do you know about it? You’ve been wrong about everything so far. Everything.” Tears are streaming down her face by the end, but she doesn’t let herself break down completely.

“Yeah.” He nods grimly. “I know.”

“He left me here.” Her voice trembles through fresh tears. “Just like the first time. I got back last time. I’ll get back this time, too.”

“Rose, I’m sorry. But I’m not wrong this time. You can’t get back.”

Jake looks over at him with wide eyes, as if to warn him that what he’s saying is only going to make things worse. Well, he may be right. But he doesn’t want to lie to her anymore. Not ever.

“Just go away!” She turns back towards the desk and angrily shoves a stack of folders and papers off of it, and they flutter in the air and slap to the ground in discord for several seconds.

He considers just listening to her, walking away and leaving her be. He has never been one to stay somewhere he isn’t wanted for one second too long. He just never thought Rose would be the one telling him to leave her alone. It makes his single heart ache so much it feels like any moment it will be too fatigued to beat any more.

She’s all he has. Literally all he has in this universe. And she doesn’t want him.

He has to force himself to remember the silent conversation he just had with himself. He won’t be the one to quit. He’ll only leave her if she forces him too.

He made a promise. Together.

He takes one slow, cautious step towards her.

“I am so sorry, Rose. If If there was any way I could get you back, I’d do it. I promise you.”

She jerks her head towards him, a hint of surprise on her face he hadn’t expected.

Worried he’s upset her more, he offers an olive branch.

“If you really want me to leave, I will. But I’d like to stay with you.”

She doesn’t give him an answer on that, but instead fixates in something else he said.

“Get me back?” she repeats his phrasing.

“Yes,” he affirms, slowly, afraid how she’ll interpret this.

“Us,” she says, sobered just slightly.

“What?”

“Get us back. I was takin’ you with me.”

“Oh.” He’s taken aback. “You were?”

“Thought I’d just leave you here?”

She’s turning it into a morbid joke, but yes. He did think that. He tries not to let any tears slip out at the acute reminder. He shrugs, staring over at the computer rather than her face.

She’s quiet for a moment.

“I promised I’d never leave you.”

Meeting her eyes again, tears still steadily streaming from them, it’s all he can do not to break down himself. He is instantly, selfishly relieved she wasn’t ever planning to abandon him. But it also feels like she sees this as more of a responsibility now than anything; a chore she promised she would take care of rather than a relationship she’s entered into willingly. He can’t help but wonder, if the situation was reversed – if he’d been stuck in this universe on his own and she was still with the other Doctor – would she be this desperate to find her way back to _him_? Or would she be perfectly content with the full Time Lord, and only think of this version of him in passing from time to time? A sad little anecdote from that one time Davros tried to destroy the multiverse? He can’t help but assume the latter.

But Rose interrupts his internal torment.

“You once promised me the same thing.”

As soon as she’s said the words, he’s flooded by the vivid memories they conjure. A quiet, deserted street outside a chip shop, raised voices and stinging eyes.

_This is really seeing the future. You just leave us behind. ‘S that what you’re gonna do to me?_

_No. Not to you._

Things had never quite been the same between them, after that.

The Doctor takes a step closer, wanting nothing more than to keep that promise right now. He’s never left her. This him. And he never will.

“Should’ve known he didn’t mean it.” Rose shakes her head and covers her face with her hand as she dissolves into quiet sobs, incapable of further argument.

The Doctor continues approaching, wondering if Rose will eventually stop him. But as he gently rests his hand on her back, hoping with everything he has she won’t flinch away, she does the opposite. She turns and falls against his chest. He wraps his arms around her instantly, closing his eyes with a sigh of relief that she’s allowing it.

It’s a strange thing, feeling so at home and so grateful to hold her again, after being physically apart from her for so long. Aside from the single kiss on the beach, he hasn’t held her like this since before Canary Wharf. For a few moments he lets himself enjoy it, despite everything, because she feels so right in his arms, warm and soft and designed for him. It begins to stitch up the gaping hole in his heart, just a little patch that he hopes they can add to later.

But when the temporary relief fades, it begins to feel like just another way the universe can twist the knife. He’d imagined how wonderful their embrace would be if they were ever reunited, joyful and energetic and peppered with kisses and confessions of their affection. But this is completely hollow. Solemn. He’s hearing sobs and gasps instead of harmonic sighs and whispers of ‘I missed you.’ And she’s not returning his embrace, not really. Merely accepting it. It’s almost morbid. Like someone has died, and there’s nothing he can really do to console her.

He’s trying to comfort her even as he is the very one she is mourning.

But all he wants to do is wipe her tears away. And throw a few good punches at the other Doctor for doing this to her.

But he keeps forgetting: he, too, played an active part in getting her stuck here, and soon he just wants to punch himself instead. He can hardly bear to see her so much as sniffle, and seeing her like this, completely broken by despair, is too much. He so badly wants to take her pain away. He’d take it on himself without a second thought.

He looks over to Jake, and the man looks anxious. Wondering if he should stay in case Rose needs him, or step away to give them privacy. Exchanging a long glance with the Doctor, he slowly starts to back away. He points to a mobile phone sitting on the counter next to the control computer, then holds his hand to his cheek in a gesture to call him. The Doctor nods surreptitiously, and lets Jake walk away. If Rose still doesn’t want to talk later on, the Doctor will call him himself. Just to let him know Rose is all right. If she ever is.

Rose doesn’t notice Jake has left.

After a few minutes, Rose can’t hold herself upright anymore, and they end up on the floor where Rose was before.

Sitting on his lap, she buries her face in his suit, soaking it with tears.

He doesn’t try to engage her.

What could he even say?

He doesn’t want to make anything worse. Or facilitate her realizing this is entirely his fault. He’s sure with time she’ll figure that out on her own, if she hasn’t already. This physical closeness might merely be a temporary allowance that will be revoked once she’s let the tears run their course. In all likelihood, she’ll go back to treating him like a pariah when this is over.

He hides his own face, resting his chin on her head as much as he can. Because as the minutes drag by, quite a few tears of his own spill over.

She wouldn’t be this upset if she wanted this, even remotely. This is so clearly _not_ what she wanted. It’s almost worse, somehow, than when they were apart. At least then he could imagine that she still loved him and missed him. Rather than having her here in his arms at last only to discover he is no longer what she wants. When they were together before, they had shared a mental as much as physical intimacy. He had seen into her mind enough times to have a fairly good idea of what she wanted. And she wanted him. She loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone, and it was gorgeously intoxicating. He basked in it each and every time.

And she had clawed her way across universes to get back to him, because she still does love him.

Only, it’s not him anymore.

The one she’s desperately in love with is the other Doctor. The one who’s still a hundred percent Time Lord.

And this him is the reason she can’t be with that him.

He wishes he’d never been born. That Donna could have somehow saved the multiverse without him. Gained the powers that she did without the metacrisis event that spawned him and took her memories. He and he alone is the cause of Rose’s devastation and he curses his very existence for it.

But there’s no going back. Even with the TARDIS, there’d be no way of undoing what’s been done. All he can do is give everything he has to her in reparation. And that starts here. Even if all he can ever do is hold her while she cries, he’ll do it. It’s the very, very least he can do for trapping her here with him. He’ll keep her safe in his embrace for as long as she wants him to. For as long as she lets him.


End file.
